The 36-foot-long Reapers are each the size of a jetfighter, can fly about 16 hours, and can carry a dozen guided bombs and missiles. They are built with laser and radar targeting. (US Air Force via Associated Press/ File)."
The sign of a great blogger is ONE WHO MAKES YOU QUESTION your most CHERISHED and VALUED BELIEFS!
For some that could be 9/11, others Iraq, still others on any number of issues or values.
Well met, sir!
As posted with original commentaries and observations by me:
I think of all the core beliefs that have been shattered, this is the most painful of all:
"Peter Gelderloos (an excerpt from his book, How Nonviolence Protects the State)
--hattip--"Time and again, people struggling not for some token reform but for complete liberation — the reclamation of control over our own lives and the power to negotiate our own relationships with the people and the world around us — will find that nonviolence does not work, that we face a self-perpetuating power structure that is immune to appeals to conscience and strong enough to plow over the disobedient and uncooperative.
We must reclaim histories of resistance to understand why we have failed in the past and how exactly we achieved the limited successes we did. We must also accept that all social struggles, except those carried out by a completely pacified and thus ineffective people, include a diversity of tactics. more
I had to read this next item several times before I could get through the ripple effect of feelings.
Self-reflection is not for the squeamish, and even though I may not like what I see, truth demands no less.
My first reaction was anger.
Yup, the last of my belief systems and the one hope and way I saw trashed, my heroes besmirched! Why even bother! Who cares?!!! You have taken everything else, so why not?
To wit:
"At a time when more soldiers are committing suicide than are dying in battle, it is well to remember that, no matter how thoroughly indoctrinated the belief in the superiority of an abstraction, there remains within each of us a powerful life-force that can never be fully repressed. What Gandhi called Satyagraha – a “Truth-force” or “Soul-force” – remains deep within us as, perhaps, the greatest power at work upon each of us. The state – and the civilization it is helping to bring down – will continue to fight this life-force in every conceivable manner, not simply in the war system, but in efforts to regulate even the most miniscule details of life’s expressions.
When the minds and the spirits of men and women combine to address, with intelligence, what we have done to ourselves – and are doing to our children and grandchildren – we may be able to walk away from our roles as servo-mechanisms to state and corporate power interests, and to discover how to live according to that life-force within each of us. To those unable or unwilling to confront the wickedness implicit in their robotic existences, there will be nothing but unfocused anger and giggling to accompany their trip into the awaiting black-hole.
--SOURCE--"
Passing through that the resignation and acceptance phase.
As the author will point out, nothing is a simple as it seems (that does not, however, make me discard my belief that the nonviolent, noncooperation way is the only way; only that violence SHOULD BE held in reserve as a SELF-DEFENSE), and the comparisons and analogies he makes -- while rudimentary in some cases -- are quite accurate and correct.
However, when I looked inside myself -- save for the involuntary reaction of emergency -- I simply will not be able to kill anyone. Further reflection was required as the gnawing fear lapped at my feet.
In the end, Malcolm X said it best:
“I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence”
In fact, though I would never employ violence myself I would never ask that those defending themselves from US or Israeli assaults forswear violence, nor would I stand in the way of an American patriot using it to protect me.
"Nonviolence and Its Violent Consequences
By William P. Meyers
6/24/09
The ideology of nonviolence has come to play a major role in political struggles in the United States of America and, indeed, in nations around the world. Almost every organization seeking radical change in the USA has been targeted by organizers for the nonviolence movement. Organizations like Earth First!, which originally did not subscribe to the ideology of nonviolence, have since then adopted that ideology or at least its set of rules for protest and civil disobedience. Yet nonviolence activists have put little energy into bringing their creed to establishment, reactionary, or openly violent organizations.
In this essay it will be argued that nonviolence encourages violence by the state and corporations. The ideology of nonviolence creates effects opposite to what it promises. As a result nonviolence ideologists cooperate in the ongoing destruction of the environment, in continued repression of powerless, and in U.S./corporate attacks on people in foreign nations. To minimize violence we must adopt a pragmatic, reality-based method of operation.
I agree that violence, properly defined, is bad. It should, ideally, not be part of how humans deal with each other. I believe that a society should and can be created where no state, economic entity, or religion uses violence against people. In such a society people can achieve their individual and collective goals through voluntary cooperation. But when you scrape the make-up off the face of the ideology of Nonviolence, there you will find, grinning, the very violence it pretends to oppose.
Much of the ability of the corporate state to neutralize its opposition in the USA (and elsewhere) depends on purposeful confusion of the language used to discuss the issues. It is important to distinguish exactly what is meant by violence, not being violent, and the ideology of Nonviolence. Most people have a pretty clear idea of what violence is: hitting people, stabbing them, shooting them, on up to incinerating people with napalm or atomic weapons. Not being violent is simply not causing physical harm to someone. But gray areas abound. What about stabbing an animal? What about allowing someone to starve because they cannot find means to pay for food? What about coercing behavior through the threat of violence? Through the threat of losing a job?
Violence as a dichotomy, with the only choices being Violence or Non-violence, is not a very useful basis for political discussion, unless you want to confuse people. Violence, the word, must be modified and illustrated to be useful for discussion. In this essay violence against animals, plants, and inanimate objects will be distinguished from violence against humans. Violence, unmodified, will always mean direct violence, actual bashing of people, and will be distinguished from the threat of violence, as when laws are passes with violent penalties attached. Also distinguished will be economic violence, as when economic activity leads to physical harm to humans, such as starvation or disease. Other methods of categorizing violence need to be distinguished, such as violent self-defense against violent predation.
The ideology of nonviolence will from this point on be distinguished from ordinary not-being violent by capitalizing it thus: Nonviolence. Most people are not-violent most of the time. Even soldiers and policemen spend more time in a not-violent state than actually committing violent acts. Most social-change activists, including environmentalists, have little or no experience with inflicting violence on other people. Yet the Nonviolence activists target social change activists with their doctrine, rather than teaching it to those policemen, soldiers, politicians and businessmen who do occasionally practice violence.
Nonviolence claims to have found a method to bring violence to an end. The fact that it has not worked at all so far has not deterred the adherents of Nonviolence from marching onward towards their millennium. If only more people would listen to us, our dreams would come true, they say. On the other hand they like to claim that non-violence has a remarkable track-record of success, with the gold-medalists of the Nonviolence Olympics usually being put forward as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.
Nonviolence ideology states that violence begets violence. Since the goal is a non-violent society, (even if other goals are included such as economic justice, national self-determination, etc.), only nonviolent actions can be used in struggles to change society. Thus one may argue (politely), publish, vote, and assemble in protest. At the extreme edge of Nonviolence ideology lies the Holy Grail: non-violent civil disobedience.
Nonviolence has but one prescription for all social diseases. It prescribes Gandhi-brand aspirin for everything from a headache to terminal cancer. But the social diseases of the real world are complex, not simple.
To gain a proper perspective on what political tools are best used to cure which social diseases you need to be well-informed of the nature of society and of the variety of political tools that are available. It should not surprise anyone that given the complex (and advanced) natures of our social diseases, a one-size fits all political solution is not likely to succeed.
To put this is less colorful terms, to change reality you must know reality. You cannot pretend that aspects of reality do not exist just because there is nowhere to put them in your ideological box. It does not matter whether your ideology is Nonviolence, or Marxism, or Free-Market Capitalism; reality will do what it wants to do. So let us examine some aspects of reality. The goal to keep in mind is the minimization of global violence (the total amount of violence against humans on earth. Preferably including economic violence and even threats of violence).
The failure to oppose violence encourages or allows violence, and the effectiveness of opposition directly correlates with the level of discouragement of violence. But the opposition needed to stop the rape of a woman may vary greatly according to circumstances (particularly, the personality and experience of the rapist). Such situations can be only of metaphorical use in analyzing the opposition needed to stop a sugar corporation from bribing presidents and congressmen to order the US Army to murder 2 million peasants in order to take their land (as happened when the US grabbed the Philippines in 1898).
Since Nonviolence has only one solution to all problems, it can only offer degrees of Nonviolent action for any given situation. For rape I suppose you are supposed to Nonviolently interpose yourself between the rapist and the intended victim. If the rapist has a history of rapes, you can talk to him and tell him about how much better his life would be if he adopted Nonviolence as a way of living. For war against third world peasants you can Up the Level of Nonviolence. You can call for Massive Nonviolent Protest. You can sit in front of a Federal Building for a few minutes before being hauled away by the police, most probably being released after being given a ticket.
I should point out here that I have chosen two examples that I know cause ordinary people and even people who believe in Nonviolence to question its effectiveness. That is to make clear that violence as an automatic solution to social problems is just as out of touch with reality as Nonviolence. But I must emphasize that violence is counter-productive in most situations. Situations that are about to escalate into violence can often be diffused by wise intervention, by talking or physically placing oneself between antagonists. In bar-room fights on TV usually once two people start fighting the entire bar crowd starts throwing chairs around, but in reality in most bars friends of the drunken boxers pull them apart until they can calm down.
At all levels of society self-defense discourages aggression, and is a far better principle (when extended to the idea of community defense and defense of Mother Earth) to use as a starting point than Nonviolence. The normal interpretation of self and community defense, arrived at after millennia of experimentation by almost all societies on earth, is that you can use as much violence as is necessary to bring an end to the current attack. Of course, this is a matter of judgement. It is also a favorite plea of hypocrites. The Romans used self-defense as a pretext for their village to conquer and rule a territory extending from England to Judea. The “American People” have self-defended themselves from the villages of Roanoke and Plymouth across this continent to the Pacific and on to Hawaii and the Philippines. Nevertheless, self-defense is not only a right, but a duty. A community that refuses to defend itself against aggression encourages further aggression. Under the rules of Nonviolence aggressors always win. There is nothing to stop them from marching around the world, taking what they want, killing those who are inconvenient, and congratulating themselves.
India and Gandhi
Ideologists of all stripes like to retell history in a manner that tends to leave out details (sometimes huge details) that would bring their ideology into question. Most Americans know almost nothing of the history of the Indian subcontinent and the creation of the Indian nation. The only people with an interest in telling this story in the USA are the Nonviolence political activists. The story is fairly simple as they retell it: Gandhi returned to India after working for civil rights for Indians in South Africa. India was ruled by Great Britain. Gandhi inspired the Indian people to demand independence from Great Britain, using non-violent civil disobedience. The Brits killed some Indians and beat up others, but eventually saw the light and granted India independence. Hence Nonviolence is the solution to all problems.
Reality was much more complex.
When the British first set foot in India in the 1600’s, they came as the East India Company and made a treaty with the dominant power, the Mughal empire, in an alliance against the Portugese. But the Indian continent was not one country. Not only did the Mughal empire embrace several principalities that were in alliance with it, instead of ruled directly, but most of southern India was composed of smaller states opposed to the empire. The Mughals were Moslems, most Indians were not. The Mughal empire more or less collapsed in the 1700’s, but not due to the British.
When Gandhi returned to India at the end of World War I the situation had evolved but had remarkable similarities to that of 1600. The British government ruled India, sort of. There were many semi-independent principalities suffering varying degrees of supervision by the Viceroy. The Indians were divided by language, ethnicity, religion, and caste. The westernized intellectuals had formed the Indian National Congress party in 1885. As early as 1884 the Ilbert bill put Indian judges on the same footing as European judges in Bengal; native Indians took the same exams to enter the civil service as British colonists (but the exam was administered in London; fine if you attended school in Britain, but difficult for the average Indian to take advantage of). Legislative councils with Indian members existed, though they had limited powers. It was clear that in time India would be ruled by the Indians; the Viceroy Curzon promised that before 1900. The problem with transition was not simply that there were British who liked the old system of direct bureaucratic rule and economic exploitation. Indians were not united; many aristocrats and princes favored their old arrangements with the British; and even the Congress party was divided between factions known as Moderates and Extremists. The defeat of a European power, Russia, by the Japanese in 1905 had fired India’s imagination. The Bolshevik revolution and the spread of communism also played an important role in both uniting and dividing Indians between the two world wars.
More reforms were granted by the British between the wars, but independence seemed distant. Gandhi was one of the acknowledged leaders of the Congress party after he led a civil disobedience campaign and then served 6 years in jail for it. Other parties arose and were elected to the councils in different provinces. The Congress party at first refused to stand for election, then ran under the pretext of destroying the reforms from within, in order to force the independence issue. Gandhi, by his writings and actions, showed India how to gain the upper hand over the British. But it worked only because the British believed in their moral superiority. In effect Gandhi challenged the British to prove their moral superiority by withdrawing from India. Gandhi’s ideology of Nonviolence was derived directly from his Jainist religious background. Suffering at the hands of the violent was a means of self-purification and showing merit for a Jainist.
In 1934 Gandhi was defeated. The civil disobedience campaign was called off. Conservatives controlled the British government and remained firmly in control of the reformed India. Gandhi and the Congress Party accepted the gradualist British approach. The 1935 Government of India Act made Dominion status within the empire the accepted goal. Federalism would be the framework for the transition, and parliamentary institutions the form of government. Large parts of the Act were used verbatim when a Constitution was finally written in 1950.
World War II led Gandhi to support Great Britain: “We do not seek independence out of Britain’s ruin.” That is, the great Saint himself endorsed Indian soldiers killing Japanese and German soldiers for a good cause. This hardly squares with the ideology of Nonviolence. The British government offered the Congress Party immediate reforms and independence immediately after the war in order to retain their loyalty. They rejected the offer. Gandhi changed his mind midstream and started the “Quit India,” campaign, which was regarded as treasonous by the British. Meanwhile the Moslems demanded that Pakistan be created as a country independent of India as well as Britain, an idea firmly rejected by Gandhi and Nehru. So when the war ended and the British wanted to hand over power to the Indians, they could not because the Indians were already fighting among themselves. Finally, in 1947, the British declared they were withdrawing in 1948. Gandhi and Nehru fell out with each other. Gandhi wanted to force the Moslems to be part of Hindu India; Nehru decided to allow the creation of Pakistan and concentrate on the Congress Party having full power to run the rest of India.
See how complex it was? This short version can only begin to show the complexity of a historical event that lasted over a century, had millions of players, and ended in one of the most violent tragedies of modern times, the Hindu versus Moslem massacres of the late 1940’s. It leaves out the role of hundreds of small political parties and groups, including armed guerilla movements. But it does show that the ideology of Nonviolence played only a supporting role in the independence of India. Gandhi probably genuinely believed in Nonviolence at some points in his life, but he used it as a stage prop, and felt free to use and condone other tactics when he thought that advantageous.
Martin Luther King, Nonviolence, and the National Guard
So, on to the United States, a place where moral smugness takes second seat to no one, not even the British. And low and behold, the Nonviolent activists parade out another Saint, one Martin Luther King. A good man, in my book, but not someone who ended Jim Crow through Nonviolence.
Jim Crow (racism) was itself a complex social phenomena, composed ultimately of social beliefs, customs, violent tactics, and laws that evolved over a long period of time. The end of Jim Crow (and it isn’t totally over yet) came about as a result of a complex set of individual decisions made by real human beings. Black Americans had fought back against various aspects of Jim Crow ever since the era of Reconstruction. Many had simply fled the southern version, finding the northern version easier to put up with.
Martin Luther King certainly played a prominent role in opposition to segregation. But so did the Black Muslims and Black Panthers, the Communist Party USA and the proliferation of other Leninist, Anarchist and New Left groups. Individual acts of defiance, most of them forgotten by everyone but their actual participants, were probably even more important, as were the acts of communal self-defense we usually refer to as race riots. Black veterans had used their military skills after every war they had fought in to attempt to assert their rights; the large number of black veterans returning from Vietnam were a very real danger to the government, given the explosive social mixture of the times.
However much credit you may want to assign to various groups or types of action for their effectiveness of ending racial discrimination during the 1960’s, it is simply factually inaccurate to give the leading role to the ideology of Nonviolence. The leading role went to the National Guard, a group backed up by the Army, Navy, and Marines; if necessary by nuclear weapons. When Presidents of the United States decided to send in the National Guard to desegregate schools in southern states, the racists had little choice but to back down.
Whether the President, Congress or Supreme Court (in passing and enforcing civil rights laws) did it out of the goodness of their hearts, or because they feared a violent revolution that would overthrow the government, or because some marchers took oaths of nonviolence, in the end it was violence and the threat of violence that ended segregation. The same National Guard that walked black children into public schools was a part of a military establishment murdering civilian women and children at Vietnam at the same time, so don’t worry that I’m giving them undue praise. I am simply describing a complex reality as accurately as possible.
In sum, the situation in which Martin Luther King played a major role showed that violence does not always beget violence. The National Guard, an instrument of violence, was used to end an ongoing tide of violence, Jim Crow. As a related example, which I won’t present in detail here, the Black Panthers, by buying shotguns and using them, caused a major drop in the level of violence the Oakland Police were using against blacks. Gandhi was willing to go to jail for his beliefs; the Panthers were willing to die, if necessary, to defend their community. And many were murdered by the police, FBI, and Cointelpro.
Eco-sabotage and Other Grey Areas
If Nonviolence activists were content to preach their gospel to the military, the police, the capitalists and other violent and oppressive groups, I would not need to write this essay. They focus their efforts, however, on purifying groups that are working for social change. In no case I know of have they targeted a violent group and convinced it to not be violent. Instead they target groups that are already not violent and imbue them with a set of rules that reduce their effectiveness. In at least one instance, the White Train movement of the early 1980s, it was later revealed that one of the Nonviolence activists was actually an undercover agent for the Portland police. This kindly looking, white-haired man delighted in explaining how almost any action designed to stop the White Train (carrying nuclear warheads) was violent, and hence how the only usable tactic was silently witnessing the passing of the train. His tactics for manipulating the groups involved were indistinguishable from the tactics used by Nonviolence activists to turn Earth First! in the period from 1988 to 1991 from being a revolutionary group that was genuinely wild and dangerous to the corporations raping the earth into a toothless poodle competing with the Sierra Club for strokes from society’s masters.
While they may walk into a non-Nonviolence group and declare that they are now making the rules and telling everyone what to think (even Leninists seem relatively non-arrogant compared to most of the leaders of the Nonviolence movement), Nonviolence activists, usually focus their tactics on grey areas. Often the grey areas include the question of excluding (violently, if necessary!) groups and individuals that have decided against taking Nonviolence oaths from taking part in decision making, civil disobedience, and even protest.
However, a clearer example of the effects of Nonviolence is how they attack the question of sabotage. This question arose with regard to Earth First!, which included sabotage within the range of tactics used during the 1980’s.
Sabotage was a way of life in Earth First! circles in 1989. Sure, much of it was petty, more a matter of making the participants feel empowered than effectively stopping earth-rape. But it was a part of our lives; I was there, I saw it and did it, I do not regret it. Perhaps starting earlier, but certainly well underway by 1988, there was an influx of federal agents (and perhaps private agents hired by public relations firms) into Earth First! Coincidently, or maybe not, Nonviolence activists who did not subscribe to the Earth First! credo, “No compromise in defense of mother earth,” also started appearing and arguing against sabotage and other Earth First! tactics that they considered violent, like running. Yes, running, but if I used that as an extended example most people would think I was writing satire rather than a serious essay.
According to Nonviolence activists sabotage is a form of violence. It feeds the cycle of violence by giving the sabotaged entities an excuse for their own violence. They confuse the issue by saying that the actions of physical tools (like swinging a sledgehammer) is the same as violence against persons. Next thing we know they’ll be prohibiting dancing because people swing their arms and hips to dance.
Without a doubt sabotage is illegal. But legality has little to do with violence or its minimization. Many not-violent activities are illegal, and many violent activities ranging from hockey to US troops shooting unarmed peasant children in the Third World are not illegal.
Without a doubt, in fact by definition, sabotage violates property rights. But since the Nonviolence activists are not generally members of the Libertarian Party, you would think they would not be that concerned with protecting corporate and government owned property (it is very rare that eco-sabotage harms the property of individual real persons).
In fact, when questioned, Nonviolence activists consider sabotage violent for one of two reasons: they are really police agents charged with protecting corporate property, or they think violence to non-animate physical objects is the same thing as violence to human beings.
I submit that building a house with a hammer and nails is not a violent act. I reject the idea that sabotage is a violent act. I do not believe that even if it does sometimes result in violent reprisals by violent corporations that the correct way to determine a course of action that may save Mother Earth is by failing to act because our opponents have a history of violence.
Consider a US invasion of a Third World country (I’ll generalize). Army troops are charged with murdering peasants who are trying to take back their land stolen by US corporations that are growing Monsanto-brand genetically engineered opium poppies to make heroin to sell in America’s ghettos to raise money for the CIA to help it help US companies grab more peasant land. A woman who has been forced into prostitution by the soldiers, after her captors have fallen asleep, sabotages their guns so they will have to wait a few days while they get shiny new guns to kill more peasants. Clearly the woman has, at least temporarily, lessened the cycle of violence. But Nonviolence activists cannot be wrong, so there must be something wrong with my example. Is sabotaging weapons violent or Nonviolent or not-violent? Dance on the head of that pin, if you will. And if you are sane, and conclude damaging weapons used to murder people is not violence, then what of the next gray area: damaging machines that are being used to destroy our earth?
Fallback Nonviolence arguing position: Nonviolence is a universal truth, but maybe the Third World is different than the US where we have free speech and democracy and a big middle class and respect for property rights. And please don’t come to the next meeting, and you can’t be in our affinity group, and you can’t speak from stage at any rally we are able to control.
By 1993 Earth First! had adopted Nonviolence as a principle superior to “No compromise in defense of mother earth.” The mental gymnastics required for this are: violence is destroying mother earth, so she can only be saved by Nonviolence, therefore we must not compromise Nonviolence in our defense of mother earth.
Elections, Courts, and Violence
Losing momentum as it became just another eco-protest group (one with much more radical theories, sometimes referred to as Deep Ecology) in practice, Earth First!, with the approval of its new set of Nonviolence leaders, entered into alliances with groups using law suits to defend the environment.
That is not bad strategy, in some ways, but it’s a bizarre application of Nonviolence, if you think about it.
(But then Nonviolence requires a great deal of Nonthinking.)What are courts, police, and government but instruments of violence? Consider a victory, any of a number of cases in which a judge has ruled in environmentalists’ favor and issued an injunction against timber harvesting. What does an injunction mean? It means that you do what the judge says, or the armed might of the government will force you to do it, using means that can not possibly be rationalized as not-violent, much less Nonviolent.
The only way out of this conundrum for the Nonviolence apostles is to pretend that government is not violent. And it usually is not violent to the bourgeois gentlehommes who make up the ruling class. These men and women are realists, they aren’t going to shoot it out with the government. If the rare honest judge enforces the Endangered Species Act, these men can wait until their money can buy elections and representatives and judges to gut the Act. I don’t object to winning a stay for the forests through litigation; I object to Nonviolence activists labeling sabotage as violence and court orders as Nonviolence. But then Gandhi was a lawyer, and what rational person can fathom a system created by a Jainist lawyer? A system that says that if the forests must suffer to end the cycle of violence, so be it?
Declawing the Revolution From Within
The ideology of Nonviolence is not merely mistaken in attempting to apply one solution to fix all problems. It is an ideology used by our police state to make opposition to the violent policies of our government ineffective. The police use Nonviolence as a method of controlling potentially troublesome social change groups. Many of the Nonviolence advocates that float around the social change movements are on police payrolls, or should be. Many have been trained by public relations agencies, which spotted the tactic as a very productive one for their corporate clients.
Their tactics are revealing, but simplistic. They accuse anyone they disagree with of being violent. They scare their followers with stories of the terrible fates in store for anyone who brings down the wrath of the police or the middle class voters on their precious Nonviolent affinity groups or their cause. They hold secret meetings among themselves to reach a consensus for “Nonviolence Codes” that would be more accurately called “Do Nothing,” codes. Then they declare an issue to be their turf, and declare that anyone joining in on the issue must accept their dictatorial “consensus” decisions.
They confuse and manipulate people with a bizarre mechanics of consensus. The key rule is that one person may block consensus, that is, if even one person in the group objects to an action, then that action cannot be done. This rule is extremely loaded in the direction of no action at all. Then again, just try to block the pre-determined consensus in favor of Nonviolence. Explain that you understand that the ideology and practice of Nonviolence is in fact a violent ideology because it encourages State and Corporate violence.
Watch the claws and fangs pop out of the Nonviolence folk. They have a lot of pent-up anger, and they would much rather take it out on an honest activist than on the people who are actually destroying the earth and murdering its peasant stewards. Be careful, they’ll probably report you to the police. They probably are the police.
Playing with the Media
One common argument against more militant forms of protest and action is that these will alienate the media and the general public, “upon whose support the ultimate success of our campaign depends.” While this argument is used in many contexts for many political purposes, it is especially used by Nonviolence propagandists to maintain their control of the acts of political (and environmentalist) groups.
Again, a little critical thinking will reveal that Nonviolence, by refusing to look at reality or meaningfully address grey areas, sets its hand firmly in league with Violence. The usual argument is that any violence or destruction of public property will result in negative coverage by the Press, and a negative reaction from Middle Class Americans, who vote in elections and secretly subscribe to the Jainest political principle of Nonviolence.
When you hear people make this argument, you know that their brains have been thoroughly washed.
The Media in America is not one thing, but it is pretty close. It is almost all owned by large, in some cases international, corporations; we’ll ignore the seldom-heard alternative media here, except to say that it needs to be supported and expanded. The Corporate Media is Violence, because it is Money. It constantly promotes violence against the powerless and those who have resources that corporations want to grab as their own. It glorifies war; look at how it covered the War Against Iraq and the War Against Serbia and the War Against the Nicaraguan people. It glorifies violence; flip on the TV and watch Pro Wrestling. Open the newspaper and read about the football and hockey games.
The only times the corporate media is against Violence is when that serves the greater ends of Corporate violence. When a division of US Marines grabs peasant lands in Central America the media cheers; when some oppressed workers in the US grab some canned goods during a riot, that same media deplores violence. When anyone shoots a cop or lawyer the media deplores violence; when the lawyers and cops are doing the shooting and hanging the media cheers.
Of course the media is going to portray Earth First!, ELF, the IWW and all groups that threaten corporate control and domination in any negative way they can. Sure they’ll call them violent at the least excuse. And the Nonviolence Activists will break solidarity with those who are trying to end violence, and join hands with the corporate media denouncing “violent” activities.
Can the media turn the middle class, even the working class, against reformers and revolutionaries? Sure! That’s their job. That’s one of the things their sponsoring corporations pay them for. But it isn’t the violence or Nonviolence of the activists that is being targeted. Nor is it the natural Nonviolence of the people that is being appealed to. People love righteous violence, and with good cause. They applaud it in the movie theaters, they glorify it in patriotic speeches. What must be kept clear is the righteousness of the cause. Nonviolence does not add to (or subtract from) the righteousness of any cause. Willingness to fight and, if unlucky, die for a cause is what adds to its righteousness, in public perception.
People were willing to kill for Racism, but almost no one could be found who was willing to die for racism. Once blacks started arming themselves and had the support (at times) of the National Guard, racists proved themselves to be cowards. They did not care about racism enough to die for it; but the Black Panthers were willing to die to end it. If the Black Panthers had listened to the Nonviolence police and the corporate media, we’d still have Jim Crow today, with its ongoing tide of violence. And the Nonviolence police would be patting themselves on the back, saying “Racism is bad and violent, but at least we did not become like those violent folk.”
Becoming the Enemy
One of the most effective guilt trips borrowed by the Nonviolence police from Jainest religious beliefs is the argument that if you use violence, you will become violent. This cuts two ways: it appeals to the Christian idea of tainting of the soul, and to the pragmatic reality of habitual behavior.
On the metaphysical side, there is the contrary belief that things become their opposite. In the orient this is expressed by the Yin-Yang symbol. Under this belief system one can expect Nonviolence to create or turn into its opposite, Violence. It has a pragmatic reality basis in this case: refusing to defend yourself encourages predation, which in turn can convince a community that they had better become predatory themselves. The ancient Greeks also noted this phenomena, giving it the term enantiodromia, the tendency of a thing to become its opposite.
The real world is much too complex for simplistic metaphysical ideas to offer much in the way of guidance. Consider all of the Japanese soldiers who returned home after World War II. Many had not simply killed men in war, but had murdered civilians as well. Yet after the war Japan became a remarkably non-violent society.
Clearly the peaceful men who went to war did not become compulsive violence freaks because they followed violent orders for a period of time.
But then, they were not in power. If anything encourages violence, it is unrestrained power. The Bolshevik Party in the Soviet Union offers a good example. They were never opposed to violence; once in power they became increasingly violent until the 1950’s. When Stalin died and Khrushchev gained power, he put an end to the violence, with little opposition.
Not only are humans complex in general, but they vary markedly from one individual to the next. Exposure to violence, or chance participation in violence, have little predictive value in determining how violently an individual will act in the future. A mild-mannered father or mother will usually go to any end to defend their children from attack; and they should. Nonviolence activists who refuse to violently defend their own children when necessary are, in my eyes, more inhumanly monstrous than any predator.
In society, politics, and personal relations we are always dealing with multiple variables and complex interactions. It is often difficult to predict what the outcome of a decision will be. The simplification of Nonviolence appeals to people who have been confused by complexity. They act as if chopping some wood for kindling will set them on an inevitable path towards being a habitual ax murderer.
From what I have seen, in the real world subscribing to Nonviolence ideology in a symptom of a dogmatic personality, and history has shown that all dogmas are inherently violent in nature. The Indian Non-violence clique of Gandhi and Nehru had no qualms about sending troops with tanks to end the independence of Junagadh and Hyderabad in 1948 in order to consolidate their control of India.
Minimizing Violence: Organizational Stances
More than a critique of Nonviolence is needed if we are to make an effective defense of Mother Earth and humanity against the predators who run the world’s corporations, governments, and religions. Here, however, the space allowed limits me to critiquing Nonviolence and offer the following suggestions.
By now hopefully it is clear that Nonviolence is not the best way to minimize violence. Neither, of course, is any ideology that glorifies violence.
The correct strategy is to minimize violence while we work towards our other goals. This requires that we both minimize the ability of the military-industrial-governmental complex to use violence, and do that with a minimum of violence ourselves.
However, it should be clear that sabotage is not violence when used to stop violence by institutions.
Sabotage must be revitalized as the basic positive action that can be taken prior to a situation where true radical reform can be created.
Self-defense must be a right we reserve to ourselves. Otherwise we invite violent attacks on ourselves, our families, our organizations, and our communities. Self-defense keeps violent institutions in check. It must be combined with genuine solidarity. We must stand in solidarity with the ecosystems that are under attack, and with our fellow human beings who are under attack. Even the American middle class understands and approves of the right to self-defense.
We must use better judgement than we have in the past. We must use the right tool for each job. We cannot let ourselves be blinded by ideology.
We must use violent means, like voting in elections and filing law suits, when necessary. We must take away the power of corporations to control the government, so that the government can itself be reformed and eventually abolished in favor of voluntary community cooperation.
The path forward is not easy, but drop the load of dogma called Nonviolence off your back, and you have a lot better chance of getting where you want to go.
Not all groups or individuals must act in the same way or on the same issues. Respect your brother and sister activists’s work, but don’t let them stop you from doing what you know you have to do.
Model Resolutions Against Violence and Non-violence
Many groups may want to make it clear that, as a group, they are not going to use violence as a tool. I agree that for many groups that is a reasonable thing to do, but usually at that point some Nonviolence activists get the group to tie their hands with the cords of a not-well thought out Nonviolence Code.
I suggest something like the following resolution or bylaw be adopted in those situations:
“We are resolved that our group will not use or instigate violence against human beings as a means to achieve its ends. However, we recognize the right of people to self-defense and community defense.”
If a group really understands how Nonviolence has violent consequences, it might adopt a resolution such as:
“Whereas our group is against violent attacks upon individuals and violent attacks upon the environment, and wants to minimize such violence as quickly as possible and abolish it as soon as possible, it is resolved that we reject the ideology of Nonviolence, which encourages violence by unjust institutions.”
--MORE--"By the time I reached and reflected on the essay and the points made my frustration with the local peaceniks and their "sssshhh, sssshhhh" at the protests when I bring up 9/11 Truth became clear -- after the third reading.
Related: My Political and Spiritual Philosophy
More to follow as discovered.
Four-year-old Mark Griffin (right) looked through the glass yesterday at Kitombe, a gorilla at Franklin Park Zoo in Dorchester. (Maisie Crow for The Boston Globe)
The first day of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court drew protesters and supporters. Some demonstrators interrupted the hearings shouting antiabortion slogans before they were taken away. (Mark Wilson/ Getty Images)
Related: Abortion: The Kosher Slaughter
"
Ginsburg has a unique perspective on what’s at stake in Sotomayor’s nomination. I sat down with the 76-year-old justice last week to talk about women on the bench and their effect on the dynamics and decisions of the court....
Ginsburg, who was wearing an elegant cream-colored suit, matching pumps and turquoise earrings, spoke softly, and at times her manner was mild, but she was forceful about why she thinks Sotomayor should be confirmed and about a few of the court’s recent cases. What follows is a condensed and edited version of our interview....
Q: Did you think that all the attention to the criticism of Sotomayor as being “bullying” or not as smart is sex-inflected? Does that have to do with the rarity of a woman in her position, and the particular challenges?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: I can’t say that it was just that she was a woman. There are some people in Congress who would criticize severely anyone President Obama nominated. They’ll seize on any handle. One is that she’s a woman, another is that she made the remark about Latina women. [In 2001 Sotomayor said: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”] And I thought it was ridiculous for them to make a big deal out of that. Think of how many times you’ve said something that you didn’t get out quite right, and you would edit your statement if you could. I’m sure she meant no more than what I mean when I say: Yes, women bring a different life experience to the table. All of our differences make the conference better. That I’m a woman, that’s part of it, that I’m Jewish, that’s part of it, that I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and I went to summer camp in the Adirondacks, all these things are part of me....
Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out.... Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of....
--source-"
"... growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of"???????????????
“You get used to seeing something like this.’’
Diana slept in front of at the A-1 station on New Sudbury Street as police officers entered and left the building. (Yoon S. Byun/Globe Staff)."
Trillions for wars and banks and.... I don't want to hear another politician tell us how great we are again, 'kay?
"A former Marine who has been homeless off and on since he developed health problems that left him unable to work."
Also see: Who Remembers Timothy Finch?
Happy "anniversary," Tim (sob).
Emergency responders practiced for disaster in protective suits at the DelValle Institute in Mattapan. (Joanne Rathe/ Globe Staff)
Pigman!
Also see: Armageddon Is Now
"seeing the world for what it is and realizing that the world itself is the problem.... anyone who might object to the truth is automatically someone hiding something wrong"
(Blog author's note: I alter this fabulous and perceptive author's titles not out of disrespect, but respect at the unexpected and prescient phrases, themes, and ideas that catch my eye in his brilliant essays)
"So Many Questions and so Little Time to Answer
by Visible
Sometimes I have a lot of questions and sometimes I don’t have any. I think that during the times when I have questions, I am in the mode of altruism which inclines me to believe that answering certain questions will lead to solutions to longstanding problems. During the times when I don’t have any questions, it seems to me, I am seeing the world for what it is and realizing that the world itself is the problem; four antagonistic elements warring against each other forever and ever amen. Well… how and why I feel as I do doesn’t really matter.
Today, I’ve got some questions. One of the questions I have is… Why is the
Zippy Livni doesn’t want to form a government with Bennie Netanyahoo. We’re given the impression that this is because her party with Ehud Barak (no relation to the present U.S President) are a peace party looking for a two state solution and the Netanyahoo/Lieberman coalition is the party of war. Here’s what puzzles me. Livni’s government, under the direction of Skull Olmert, slaughtered a whole lot of Lebanese behind a false flag caper and then practically destroyed
What are we too expect from 9/11 Bennie and Mad Dog Lieberman? Here’s how it looks. With Zippy and the other Hellraiser pinheads, the Palestinians only get a little white phosphorus… a destroyed infrastructure and being used for target practice on odd days of the week with every other Sunday off. With Bennie and the Vets they get used for target practice 24/7 and everybody else gets flayed alive and crucified by the side of the road to Tel Aviv come next Hanukah and then on each of the eight days they set a different group on fire so it has a kind of ‘Spartacus celebrates Mardi Gras in Hell’ effect which will delight all the little Israelis and the Palestinians will just be happy to be playing a part in that.
My question is about the difference between these two groups of psychopaths; is it a matter of degree only? I don’t know if I’ll be able to hear your response over the noise of the bulldozers in
While we are on the subject of
It appears that Obama is not going to put an end to torture. It appears that they’ll just close Gitmo and reopen it somewhere else. It appears that he is not going to end war; he’s going to relocate that too and while offering a small token to besieged homeowners and major cash to bottomless banks, we now have bankers complaining about the token being given to the homeowners. Obama is talking tough about
Here’s another question I have. Now that we know that the Afghanistan war was all about getting the heroin trade back on it’s feet and now that we know that most of the nations engaged by proximity or presently performing the ongoing assault are engaged in it. Now that we know that many of the major banks were propping up their bottom line with huge influxes of drug money… why is nothing being done about any of it?
Well, some of you are frothing at the mouth about now because I have the temerity to say these things… never mind whether they are true or not and they damn well are… it’s that I’m saying it. That also begs the question of why the truth would bother anyone. Why is the truth so unwelcome? It’s because it can interfere with business as usual and it makes whoever may be sucking off of that tit uncomfortable because there’s an implication that they might be part of something wrong. Well… you are. You certainly are. I’m going to take it for granted from now on that anyone who might object to the truth is automatically someone hiding something wrong about themselves. It doesn’t matter what reasons you give. This is the real reason. I’ll allow that you might be clueless and stupid so you can pick that as an alternative option if you want to.
So it goes… on and on… so it goes… embarrassing questions and insufficient answers. Real answers require change. Didn’t I hear something about change recently? You’re going to get about the same amount of change as you’re getting from that big tax break. What’s that come to? I hear it’s something on the order of about $13. a week. Well whoop de doo!!! I expect you’ll be partying down now. Wiser heads may just invest that money in something and get ready to retire about a hundred years after they die.
I’ve got a lot more questions. I want to know where that new 9/11 commission is. I want to know how come the Main Stream Media has so little to say about how really bad things are going to get. I want to know what kind of a scam ‘they’ are cooking up to justify attacking
The more this whole ugly business continues and the more outrageous the acts by those manipulating it continue, the more it looks like a movie. It looks like a movie whose purpose is to expose the actors. Every day it gets more absurd and every day it gets closer to the denouement. Armies of sleepwalkers and hypnotized subjects go about their business as if the dream or the spell were reality itself. The sleepwalkers can hear the sounds of the fire engine speeding to their burning house but in the dream it seems like something else. Those hypnotized have been told it is something else. One thing you may be sure of… it is going to prove to be something else.
You’ve probably got questions too and this would be a good time for you to let fly. We’re all ears here as opposed to ears of corn everywhere else (grin). Once again, the questions that everyone should be asking themselves is, “Who am I?” “What am I doing?” "Why am I doing it?" and “If I am in danger of losing everything; what would I most hate to lose?” The clock is ticking and time is not on your side.
--MORE--"
by Chuck Baldwin
January 27, 2009
It is hard to believe, but a majority of Americans (including Christians and conservatives) seem oblivious to the fact that there is a very real, very legitimate New World Order (NWO) unfolding. In the face of overwhelming evidence, most Americans not only seem totally unaware of this reality, they seem unwilling to even remotely entertain the notion.
On one hand, it is understandable that so many Americans would be ignorant of the emerging New World Order. After all, the mainstream media refuses to report, or even acknowledge, the NWO. Even "conservative" commentators and talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, or Joe Scarborough refuse to discuss it. And when listeners call these respective programs, these "conservative" hosts usually resort to insulting the caller as being some kind of "conspiracy kook." One host even railed that if anyone questions the government line on 9/11, we should "lock them up and throw away the key." So much for freedom of speech!
This is an area--perhaps the central area--where liberals and conservatives agree: they both show no patience or tolerance for anyone who believes that global government (in any form) is evolving. One has to wonder how otherwise intelligent and thoughtful people can be so brain dead when it comes to this issue. It makes one wonder who is really pulling their strings, doesn't it?
The list of notable personalities who have openly referenced or called for some kind of global government or New World Order is extremely lengthy. Are all these people "kooks" or "conspiracy nuts"? Why would world leaders--including presidents, secretaries of state, and high government officials; including the media, financial, and political elite--constantly refer to something that doesn't exist? Why would they write about, talk about, or openly promote a New World Order, if there is no such thing?
--MORE--"
Much of history is a chronicle of immense atrocities. Whenever surplus wealth accumulates in any society, whenever people emerge from a cooperative subsistence economy, some portion of the population will do everything it can to exploit the labor of the rest of the people in as pitiless a manner as possible. This is true whether it be the slaveholders of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the antebellum American South; or the feudal aristocracy of medieval Europe; or the financial moguls of modern capitalist society. Today, throughout much of the capitalist Third World and increasingly in the United States and other industrialized nations, people are being driven into desperation and want, made to work harder for less, when able to find work.
The Gangster State
The state is the instrument used in all these societies by the wealthy few to impoverish and maintain control over the many. Aside from performing collective functions necessary for all societies, the state has the particular task of protecting the process of accumulating wealth for the few. Throughout our country’s history, people have fought back and sometimes gained a limited degree of self-protective rights: universal suffrage, civil liberties, the right to collective bargaining, the eight-hour day, public education, social security, and some human services. While these democratic gains are frequently violated and prove insufficient as a restraint against state power, their importance should not be denied.
Today in the much vaunted western democracies there exists a great deal of unaccountable state power whose primary function is to maintain the existing politico-economic structure, using surveillance, infiltration, sabotage, judicial harassment, disinformation, trumped-up charges and false arrests, tax harassment, blackmail, and even violence and assassination to make the world safe for those who own it.
There exists a state within the state, known as the national security state, a component of misgovernment centering around top officers in the CIA, DIA, FBI, the Pentagon, and policymakers in the Executive Office of the White House. These elements have proven themselves capable of perpetrating terrible crimes against dissidents at home and abroad. National security state agencies like the CIA, in the service of dominant economic interests, have enlisted the efforts of mobsters, drug traffickers, assassins, and torturers, systematically targeting peasant leaders, intellectuals, journalists, student leaders, clergy, labor union leaders, workers, and community activists in numerous countries. Hundreds of thousands of people have been murdered to prevent social change, to destroy any government or social movement that manifests an unwillingness to reduce its people to economic fodder for the giant corporations that rule the world’s economy.
JFK, the Media Mugging
Occasionally an incident occurs that reveals in an unusually vivid manner the gangster nature of the state. The assassination of President John Kennedy in November 1963 is such an occasion....
e
When I was a child I read a great deal of history, biographies and the Greek and Roman myths. I found the myths especially fascinating. Even in my youth I knew they related to human existence as much as anything did.
I used to wonder about the extreme cruelties that people visited on each other. It didn’t make sense to me. War didn’t make sense to me. Even as a kid I never saw the attraction in it. I went into the military because I was born into a military family but I had no desire to go into combat and become Sgt Rock of Easy Company. I didn’t get sent into combat but I did get to go to prison and various maximum security holding centers that were easily as dangerous as any war. You didn’t get downtime or R&R either.
I’ve always been curious about history. The most curious thing to me was how the various versions of history contradicted each other depending on who was telling the tale. I see that, these days, it is of paramount importance to have control over the way history is presented because it allows for all kinds of behavior as justification for any particular version of history.
One thing I have learned is that, though technology continues to become more modern and efficient, human evolution does not keep pace with it. The same Neanderthals that used to wield clubs now wield sophisticated arms. Most of them don’t know why they are fighting. Someone told them the people upstream were pissing in the water, just as the people further upstream were told the same thing. Wars are just a matter of business. They have nothing to do with the reasons given. They are about stealing land and making money and that’s all there is to it. You can complicate the issue, especially when you are the one stealing the land and making the money but it’s all about theft of some kind.
Today we’ve got a people who have the argument that they were thrown out of over a hundred countries for simply minding their business and not causing any trouble and that these countries just picked on them for no reason at all. As absurd as this may sound, they’re sold this bill of goods to the world. Along with being a big part of causing a great many wars they finally found a war where they could claim that certain forces were out to exterminate them and they’ve used this as currency for bad behavior ever since. They’ve used this seriously questionable event to blackmail the nations of the world out of large sums of money and laid a lot of unjustified guilt at the doors of a great many people who never had anything to do with this questionable event.
In present time they are engaged in exterminating a population before the eyes of the world. They forced 700,000 of these people off of their land via the cachet that they garnered according to this highly questionable event. Since then, for sixty years they have been diligently exterminating these people and stealing more and more of their land. This is a fact.
Recently they launched a military strike against these people for political gain. The party in power was losing the support of their own people so they needed to do something that would regain them political support for the upcoming election. They succeeded in this event. They also succeeded in destroying what little was left of the other countries manufacturing capacity. They also destroyed their livestock and food supplies. When concerned people around the world wanted to donate to these people, who are homeless and without food, the BBC decided not to run a public service video because the appeal might be considered as anti-Israel. Yes… the BBC refused to run the appeal for this reason. This is because pro-Zionist Mark Thompson is a director at the BBC. Marcus Agius, a senior independent director at the BBC is married to a Rothschild.
Things are very, very bad in Gaza. Here is a listing of some of the Israeli war criminals with their pictures.
During this vicious act of genocide the Israelis used DIME… depleted uranium …and white phosphorus on women and children and anyone else who happened to be nearby. Now they are blocking an appeal for the survivors of the devastation that they caused.
The argument has been given that the attack was to stop rockets being launched into
No one can refute anything I have put here. Meanwhile a certain portion of the world denies this has happened; denies what their own news reports tell them, denies the causes of the event and willfully obstructs the collection of aid for a ruined people.
In
Let me tell you something. Let me tell all of you something. You who stand by while such evil is committed; you who support it, you who deny it, you who blame the real victims for the crimes committed against them… all of you are a party to the crimes. You who permit these things in your names are yourself a party to the murders.
You may not believe in Karma any more than the Pope didn’t believe that the Earth rotated around the sun but it doesn’t change anything. The Earth still rotates around the sun and Karma is real. There is no arrogance greater than the arrogance of the uninformed. The presumption of knowledge by insignificant flyspecks is a wonder to behold. You truly do not know shit from shinola and you ARE going to reap the whirlwind.
I want you to think about what has happened in
I know what I see and I know what you don’t see. You are a party to this and your day will come. So, go ahead… mock and sneer and turn your indifferent backs. Don’t trouble your beautiful minds with these horrors. What goes around comes around and it is headed for you and not all your sudden conversions and disclaimers of not knowing are going to help you one bit. You are no better than the psychopaths who do these things.
--MORE--"
by Divining the News (DTN)
Those in power, have tight reigns. No amount of incisive blogging is going to change anything. we are armchair potatoes. The Arabs and everyone else are upset. And Demonstrators always get arrested, Egypt just arrested 350 protesters of the Gaza confinement.
.
It is the eve of untoward events. Its actually hard to compromise with those in power. Most of their rules are secret. And so are their identities. Escalation seems to be all that is ahead. I think masses of people will demonstrate in opposition. Before that the over eager will be shot down, figuratively or really.
.
If 3% of a population can rule us, then probably 3% can jail everyone else, or even eradicate....
--MORE--"
Related: Plea for a donation
If you can help him, please do.
"A Curious Case of Cynthia McKinney
According to whoever is giving you the information, Cynthia McKinney assaulted a Capitol Police officer at Congress one day… she didn’t have her I.D. It depends on who you talk to. I’ve had my moments with District law enforcement and there’s no telling who you are going to run into, especially in these sensitive times with all those terrorists nudge… nudge… wink… wink… running around. Let’s not get into the sort of self-importance one find in the burgeoning areas of thug industry seen in airports and anywhere people go to travel and move about freely or anywhere people go.
Because of this, Cynthia is considered a wack job by the people who operate and profit from the situations that Cynthia found herself in (and maybe you do to) because these are the same people who shade your news and talk out of your radio while you’re driving wherever you’re driving. She also said that 9/11 was an Inside Job. This was before she had her altercation.
Now Cynthia gets on the boat “Dignity” with some other people to sail some medical supplies into
There had been this cease fire between the Palestinians and the occupiers but then the occupiers broke that cease fire and, of course, that made it the Palestinians fault. Well of course it was their fault because they don’t have televisions stations and newspapers to say otherwise and they don’t have money or even food now so… who the fuck are they?
So… anyway Cynthia McKinney, this brash ‘black’ ‘woman’ who likes to assault police officers and make wild-eyed accusations about 9/11 decided that she might want to help the people in Gaza and put a public face on the thing. Why? I don’t know why. According to the people who give you your news it’s a publicity stunt. Those news people, they do a bang up job. Look at the hit they put on the guy that got hit in
So… the Israelis come out into international waters and scatter the waves with machine gun fire and then ram this boat, “Dignity” and some people are asking if it even happened or happened anywhere near the way they said it happened because Cynthia, you know, she likes to push policemen around and she’s got that 9/11 virus. Official sources say that this boat, which isn’t built for the job, took evasive action and that’s why it happened when …the boats that are designed for this sort of thing hit her. Later it was just called an accident that happened three times. The cool thing about dealing with reality instead of fiction is that you don’t have to stretch the truth cause the truth will just stretch itself to contain whatever's needed to prove once again that truth is stranger than fiction depending on your version of the truth.
I don’t know Cynthia McKinney. I do know that 9/11 was an Inside Job pulled off in a joint operation between Mossad and the CIA along with British intelligence and a few others. I do know that
Since I know who the ‘other guys’ are I’m going to have to take Cynthia at her word because compared to them she’s Mother Mary. I don’t know what she’s like in person, whether I could relate to her but I have seen her conviction when she speaks and she’s got a degree of certitude and what looks an awful lot like integrity as well. Integrity is one of those things you have to look at more than once because you don’t see it very often and sometimes when you come back later to look at it, it isn’t there anymore anyway.
I’ve only got a rough idea about what Cynthia McKinney is like but she ‘seems’ like a kind of Cassandra with ‘tude. She looks like one of those people that bought into all that stuff Martin Luther King used to talk about and she thinks it’s real AND applies across the board…. Meaning wherever people are oppressed, that’s me yesterday and maybe you tomorrow.
People used to ask me how come I liked Pete Rose so much because he did this and he said that. I told them that I don’t have to have dinner with the guy; I just like how he plays baseball. I was a baseball player myself and I understand that Charlie Hustle dynamic. So I don’t have to have dinner with Cynthia McKinney to admire her style. I like her better than any of the other bought off and paid for whores in congress with a couple, possible exceptions. Cynthia may have been one of the only members in congress who didn’t take her marching orders from
You can see where the world is at when someone tries to do a good thing and gets harassed and slandered because she wasn’t out shopping for shoes with Condolezza Rice. It’s okay to do good but… within the parameters of good defined by those who follow that aspect of the Golden Rule which states that those who have the gold make the rules.
I have watched this lady from afar for awhile. When I saw her do the emperor has no clothes thing with 9/11 I thought, “How did they let her in there?” When I heard about the thing with the troglodyte with the badge, I figured they were laying for her. If they can’t catch you in a honey trap then they’ll try to get you to step on the glue board.
I realize that boat thing is symbolic as much as anything. Reason I know that is that I would have been on board myself but I got no profile. However, when you set out to bait the hyena in his den in order to help the plight of a people that no one else seems to give a shit about I have to applaud you for your courage.
Cynthia McKinney is a class act. She puts her life where her mouth is. She doesn’t have to do this and I don’t see how it helps her to get elected again in
I just hope that the Israeli’s on the boat that rammed her didn’t have to get counseling afterwards. It ‘s got to be really tough to be an eight hundred pound gorilla in a cage match with a canary ….and to get the people to sympathize with you. I don’t know, somehow they get it done. It’s like some 6’6” serial rapist claiming that the 80 pound 13 year old girl he was doing made him do it AND you believed him. Most of you still do.
--MORE--"
That last analogy is really vivid and brilliantly captures the essence of the situation.
And why not let St. Cynthia tell you her experience in her own words?
"Cynthia McKinney: We Lived to Tell the Story - Lebanon Rescued Us (Revised)
January 1, 2009 - We Lived to Tell the Story: Lebanon Rescued Us
Yesterday, we met with the President of Lebanon, the Chief of the Military, and the Interior Minister who all thanked us for responding and risking our lives on a mission of mercy; we profusely thanked them for rescuing us.
What would we have done, stranded out at sea, prohibited from reaching our destination, low on fuel, with a badly damaged boat if Lebanon had not accepted us? Lebanon sent their ships to find us. Lebanon rescued us. Lebanon welcomed us. And we are truly thankful.
It's official now. We've been told that the sturdy, wood construction of our boat, Dignity, is the reason we are still alive. Fiberglass would probably not have withstood the impact of the Israeli attack and under different circumstances, we might not be here to tell the story. Even at that, the report that came to us yesterday after the Captain and First Mate went back to Sour (Tyre) to inspect the boat was that it was sinking, the damage is extensive, and the boat will take, in their estimation, at least one month to repair. Tomorrow, we will bring the Dignity from Sour to Beirut. And now, we must decide what to do and from where we will do it and how we are to get back to wherever that might be.
My personal, and I know the group's, thanks must go to Al Jazeera, that allowed three of their reporters to be onboard with us on our voyage. As a result, Al Jazeera carried the story of the Dignity live, from castoff in Cyprus when our spirits were high, right up through the manacing maneuvers of the huge, super fast Israeli ships before they rammed us, the Israeli calls on the ship phone after the ramming calling us terrorists and subversives and telling us to return to Cyprus (even though the Israelis later claimed that they didn't know who we were, they knew enough about us to tell us where we had come from), and the fact that we didn't have enough fuel to follow their instructions, right up to their threat to fire at us if we didn't turn around, ending with our beaten-up boat limping into Sour harbor in Lebanon. Al Jazeera carried our story as "breaking news" and performed a real service to its audience and to us. Al Jazeera called the Israelis to inquire about the incident right as it was happening and I am sure the Israelis were prepared to leave none to tell the story. Al Jazeera told the story and documented it as it was happening.
One of those Al Jazeera reporters with us was Sami El-Haj, who was detained in Guantanamo by the United States for six incredibly long years. What an honor to even exchange glances with such a humble man who had endured so much pain at the hands of the U.S. government. I apologized to him that my tax dollars were being used in such a despicable way. And Sami's crime according to the U.S.? Born in Sudan, and reporting for Al Jazeera in Afghanistan, Sami was the wrong color, the wrong nationality, the wrong religion, reporting for the wrong news outfit, telling us the truth about a wrong war. And for that he survived incarceration for six long years. Sami El-Haj, Guantanamo prisoner number 345.
Another incredibly committed journalist who was with us was CNN's Karl Penhaul. Karl reported the truth even when his own station was repeating Israeli disinformation. The fact that we were traveling with these alert journalists added to the flat-footedness and obvious crudeness of the Israeli response. Sadly, Israel has changed its story too many times to count, and that's because they are not telling the truth.
We lived to tell the story. Karl's incredible reporting, just a portion of our story, can be seen on CNN at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/30/gaza.aid.boat/index.html
where there's also video and a photo of our damaged boat. A little more of the story and film of the extensive damage can be seen at:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/12/30/gaza.aid.boat/index.html#cnnSTCVideo
This video and the photos of Karl's report is particularly interesting given that Israel claims that our boat was only scratched and that, in actuality, our captain, while trying to outmaneuver them, damaged their warship.
I'm told that CNN only played my full statement once--and that's the time that it aired live. Of course, they cut the reference to the U.S.S. Liberty. What are they afraid of?
Last night I was on PressTV.com, along with others who were on the Dignity, and we debated a representative from WINEP, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. I reminded the audience that the Palestinians don't have nuclear weapons, depleted uranium munitions, white phosphorous, or F-16s, but the Israelis do. The facts, however, tend to get garbled after being processed by the "Grand Wurlitzer" organ of state-sponsored disinformation utilizing the world's press.
With the truth clearly on our side, Israel has been reduced to releasing the ridiculous bombast below, given to me by a reporter who came to our hotel in Beirut for a visit. With their multiple, conflicting stories, it is clear that the Israelis did not expect us to live to tell the truth.
On the drive from Sour through Saida to Beirut, we were welcomed like heroes because our ordeal had been seen by everyone on Al Jazeera. The mayor of Sour came to welcome us. The mayor of Saida insisted that we stop there, on our way to Beirut, for a special ceremony. But there was something else that was visible along our drive, and that is the devastation that Lebanon, itself, has received as a result of the Israeli war machine. The scars of the war are still evident everywhere. I will write more on that tomorrow.
And one final note, President-elect Obama roared like a mighty lion onto the political scene, but now he is as silent as a lamb in the face of the death and destruction that is happening in Gaza. As we approach the birthday celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. let us remember what Dr. King said:
"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."
And after five days of aerial bombardment by Israel, the carnage in Gaza continues.
Here is the palaver that the Israelis put out for public consumption. It is pitiful that a powerful and mighty country like Israel would be reduced to publishing something so petty and weak as the following press release dated December 30, 2008:
--MORE w/tipocap--"
Bush administration says: Hamas Must End Attacks on Israel, Bush Administration Says Obama is totally silent in the face of the third straight days of Israeli butchery. We know Obama well so far. He is world-renowned for his eloquence. So, are those who talk ignorant or insane because we know that it was Israel which broke ceasefire agreement on Nov 5? See: NOVEMBER 5TH, 2008 - Six Hamas activists killed during Israeli raids in Gaza Strip.
So what is going on. Is it only the US administration that knows the best whereas Turkey says Gaza attacks a crime against humanity , there are Anti-Israeli protests across Europe, Sarkozy calls for immediate halt to Gaza violence , Britain slams ‘unacceptable’ loss of life in Gaza and Asian governments roundly condemn Israel’s ‘genocide’ in Gaza Strip . US Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is calling for a United Nations investigation into Israel’s attacks on Gaza, criticizing Israel for a disproportionate response to Hamas rocket attacks. “All this was, and is, disproportionate, indiscriminate mass violence in violation of international law,” Kucinich said in a statement. “Israel is not exempt from international law and must be held accountable.”
Three Palestinian children from the Balosha family, of five who were all killed in the same Israeli missile strike, are seen in the morgue before their burial at Kamal Edwan hopsital in Beit Lahiya, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, Dec. 29, 2008.
Israel air strikes spark protests worldwide and Morgues in Gaza are overflowing with bodies. If it doesn’t make any difference to anyone, it is the administrations in Tel Aviv and Washington. Israel considers ground attack and mobilises more troops to erase Gaza off the face of the earth. Even Haaretz writes: Trying to ‘teach Hamas a lesson’ is fundamentally wrong.
On the other hand, the man of ‘change,” Obama, defers to Bush on Gaza genocide. And Bush puts the blame on victims of decades of occupation, aggression, ethnic cleansing, racism and genocide. Is is so that Israel is a morally bankrupt state, which is led and supported by psychopaths. If Hitler and other fascists were psychopaths, then it might be true for the administrations in Tel Aviv and Washington as well, because the rest of the world combined cannot be out of its mind as we can see from the global reaction to the Israeli crimes against humanity so far. If Bush administation has some other solid reason for the nonsense it has spewed thus far or Obama has some eloquent lie, the world has yet to see it. At the moment, they stand as accomplices to the unfloding fascism in our age.
When you are afraid to speak some truth and offer dissent, you are under attack.
That is unless you are part and parcel of the attack itself.
Let's see here, we have a massacre going on and when it comes to our political leaders they are silent or else cheering on the cowboys against the indians.
Obama is silent.
Congress is silent except for Dennis Kucinich and he wants to go to the UN, follow the web of procedures, waste a lot of time and end up doing nothing. Dennis is very controlled whether he's in on it or not.
Bribery and blackmail. That will always get you somewhere.
So what did you expect? A special session of Congress called to address the issue of genocide?
Right before New Year's Eve?
The timing of the attacks could not have been better. You have to give to the land thieving, ethnic cleansing Israeli 'victims.' They know a plan when they see one.
At least the whole world is not like our congressional leaders. It looks as if millions of people around the world, even though they too are under attack, are speaking out about the premeditated murder of hundreds of dispossessed people. A good number are taking to the streets and getting exposure.
Our new president and the incoming Congress are going to continue the same old Israeli/zionist line. They have no choice. The blackmail and the fear see to that.
Once again, the solutions to any of the problems of war, economic calamity and the vast array of social problems fall to 'We the People'.
We are under attack and we are the only defense.
What are we going to do about it?
--MORE w/graphics--"
- By Karl Schwarz
12-16-8 - I started to name this essay 'Gone with the Wind' for that is what is happening to America right now. However, out of respect for Rhett Butler and Mammie, GWTW is mentioned only because it is happening right now to many lives in America. From what I am hearing, seems many Americans are starting to see what The Grapes of Wrath was all about, too.
-
- But, of course! Barky is going to assume the global leadership role to defeat Global Warming. That would be laughable material for Letterman and Leno if it were not so pathetic and wantonly arrogant. Another DC fraud is in the making. I wish George Carlin were still with us, he would ream Barky good on that one.
-
- To state that the United States is in a melt-down mode, a total wreck is putting it kindly. This has been a massive train wreck in slow motion that goes all the way back to the George H W Bush Administration. America has been on a downward decline for the past 20 years and now the cancer may not be reversible.
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- Like a malignant tumor, it has sunk its teeth into our nation and our lives and may well end America and the goodness it stood for over most of the past 232 years. Many voices have spoken out, yet America chooses to blink, shrug its shoulders, and go back to living the inane and asinine, as if some painless solution will miraculously appear on its own. I hear this, almost verbatim, way too often: "It is all so depressing...I don't know what to do."
-
- Well, when a flame thrower is scorching your ass it is way past time to figure out what to do.
-
- I have never in my life seen a serious problem go away by ignoring it, whining about it or going into depression over it. No, Scarlett O'Hara, it will not be better in the morning after you sleep on it. And if you are not hearing the message clearly from Washington, DC, let me translate for you: "Frankly, my dear, we don't' give a DAMN (about America)."
-
- Who is to blame for this fiasco, The Wreck of the Good Ship America?
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- Actually, there are three root causes that stick out the most to me. First, the decadence and greed of the American culture is to blame. We have evolved into a nation where 'things' mean more than real values or real people.
-
- Secondly, those 'chosen' to lead us are about the most despicable and incompetent among us. Truly carney show hosts bereft of character and honor, and worse, integrity. These hocus-pocus charlatans in DC are not even C Class entertainment.
-
- Lastly, the American population is to blame. A nation gets the leaders it deserves and if ever that was on display it is glaringly exhibited in current day America.
-
- Frankly, Americans might as well elect Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck. DC would be much improved over the hand-puppet executioners of America we see on TV now every time they want to flap their jaws.
-
- Good leadership cannot happen because the moment a name is announced, out come the Internet trolls and main stream media to destroy that person with any lie, stunt, or knife in the back they can dream up. Americans are going to have to blow that off and refuse the current process to elect their own leaders.
-
- Do you think you did your civic duty by going out and voting for 'CHANGE' we will never see? The only 'change' we now see is that things are getting worse...and will only get much worse If you have done your civic duty, go back to watching Jerry Springer and the other worthless shock TV shows, and remain clueless as to why the world is laughing its ass off at America on the one hand and seething in anger at America on the other. These idiots and thieves in DC and Wall Street have devastated much of the world's savings to keep you misled as to how 'robust' the US economy was.
-
- Much of this $7 trillion bailout - with NO oversight - is composed of direct cash payments to foreign capital sources to keep them from filing the lawsuit of the millennium against Wall Street and Washington, DC for FRAUD. Bernanke refuses to reveal where two TRILLION of YOUR dollars went. Get it?
-
- It seems that most Americans no longer remember what the key ingredients are that made the USA a great nation. I do, but damned if I can find a way to get people to look at realities, or even look at their own lives and realize how grave the situation is right now. I remember a day when a simple motto of "when the going gets tough, the tough get going" was all the urging America needed. Now, no amount of urging or facts disrupts from the mindless pursuits of vapid 'entertainment' and sports and other less than frivolous pastimes. So many useless distractions...all orchestrated so the average American does not need to think about the harsh realities staring them in the face. Yes, the majority of Americans will do almost anything but take a long hard look in the mirror and face those sticky, ugly realities. Until they lose their jobs, homes... and place in the pasture.
-
- I remember well when the finest products made bore the label "Made in the USA" but that has diminished to the point of almost being extinct. The last time I was in a WalMart, originally that bastion of pride for the "Made in the USA" label, I had to look down 14 aisles before I found anything that was made in our country. The simple concepts of doing a job well and actually earning that paycheck through honest, competent labor is now pretty much a thing of the past in America.
-
- The America I see today is not the America I grew up in. I miss the good America and have come to despise what it has devolved into in the prime of my professional career. When I was young I did not need a key to the house, it was always unlocked unless we were out of town, and we never were robbed. I spent over 40 years of my life being a proud but not an arrogant American. I have spent the last 20 years watching everything good about my homeland being defiled and undermined with lies, and greed and corruption.
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- America has changed with the times, but the changes I see are not the types that are desirable or indicative of greatness. Life is now a day- by-day journey, not a destination from birth to grave with an benevolent US government as your step parent, your mentor, your 'brain washer' or your savior from the hardships of life. Anyone who believes, or even thinks for a split second, that Washington, DC is an attentive caretaker for Americans is a complete idiot.
-
- These cretins in DC could not care less if you are dead or alive, or in the current state of destitution, and foundering somewhere between point A and point B. The only time you matter is every 2 or 4 years so you can cast your worthless vote, to give the bogus patina of legitimacy to this Grand Theft going on in our National Capitol.
-
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- The Danish have a great proverb: "Life is not playing a good hand; life is playing a bad hand well." What most Americans have forgotten is that they have to play that hand well, not sit on cellulite 'fast food' butts and let Washington, DC play out your life for you. Anyone waiting on solutions from DC might as well sit and wait for the Sun to rise in the West and set in the East. It will be a long wait, and America is running out of time.
-
- America was built on self-perseverance and determination, two words many Americans no longer know the meaning of today. It was also built for the most part on the simple premises of honor, character, integrity and doing a job well done or making a quality product. I have watched closely for 30 years and there is another word that America fails in. That word is discernment, and lack thereof.
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- Ask many Americans "what is of value" and a majority cannot come up with a single answer or single thing that is truly of value. Most Americans can no longer discern between a true political issue that will make or break their lives, and a moral issue entered into the discussion to further fragment our culture.
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- I see way too many people just mumbling, stumbling and waddling their way through life and not paying any attention to what is gutting their lives and leaving them in ruins.
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- When the violence was raging between the UK and Northern Ireland, an Irish pop star wrote a song that contained in its very words what is wrong with the United States today. Her name is Delores O'Riordan and she was the lead singer of the Irish band The Cranberries.
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- This is primarily for electric guitars but the acoustic guitar version makes it much easier to understand the words.
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- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0v_KvL7q
xE&feature=related -
- The words of this song say it well "it's not me, it's not my family", and "it's the same old theme since 1916". Listen close to the words, your future depends on grasping the realities of what is happening right in front of your eyes. Many Americans are refusing to face the tragic actions of our government merely because it does not directly affect them...or so they think. Their child is not in harm's way, or was sent home maimed or dead due to the lies of this US government and it's foreign adventures for oil and dominion. It is not just Bush, it is all of them in the White House, the US Congress and in key positions like CIA, the State Department, etc. It is a government agenda for the elite. And it is killing our nation.
-
- I am 57 and when I was coming of voting age the Vietnam War was raging and the US was losing. I remember, well, hundreds of thousands strong coming out in the streets to protest that war once Americans knew that Lyndon Johnson had lied to escalate it. Some of those protests became quite violent because the youth of America at that time refused to be involved in the travesty that was Vietnam. I remember a time that the youth of America would rather die on the streets of America standing up for what is right rather than in a rice patty in Vietnam playing out a great lie from Washington, DC.
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- If the Iraq lies and genocide had happened in my generation 10 to 20 million armed Americans would have been in Washington, DC casting these frauds out of power, at gunpoint or in a barrage of lead. We know the meaning of the Second Amendment, and we know exactly why these lying SOBs in DC want a Con-Con (Constitutional Convention) - to take your Freedom Of Speech and the Second Amendment.
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- Trust me, there is no terrorist in the world more frightening to Washington, DC than the wrath of America if our people decide DC has to go by whatever means necessary. Thomas Jefferson stated it clearly in the Declaration of Independence that when a government no longer serves the needs of its subjects, the people - a free people - have the right to change that government. That is the battle line people, get that straight and never forget it. You have been sold out, betrayed and stabbed in the back.
-
- I hear all of this talk about America being the land of the brave...but I yet to see much of it on the streets of America at any time during this huge Bush/Cheney/DC lie of Afghanistan and Iraq and 9-11.
-
- Look very closely at how America is falling apart right now, and appreciate that it is all blowback to the lies we have all had to endure for the past three presidential administrations. It is not just Bush. It is his father, it is Clinton, and the current moron, and now this pretend president who cannot produce a birth certificate.
-
- Where are such patriots today? Evidently playing Nintendo or PlayStation, or surfing the Internet or TV and pretending they are making a difference by pressing remote controls, pushing joy sticks, or tapping on computer keyboards.
-
- I remember, well, a time when I knew in my heart and soul that no enemy could defeat America, for America was more than just a nation. It was an ideal founded on freedom, liberty, character, integrity, and justice for all. Those magnificent traits have died during the last 20 years, and the final defeat of the United States will be nothing more than a whimper from the last American victim telling their forlorn tale on the Jerry Springer Show.
-
- Where is your outrage today, America, at the travesties that are Afghanistan and Iraq and the bogus Global War on Terror? Where is your collective understanding or moral rightness and indignation that the nation you live in has murdered close to 4 million people for oil and gas so you can live the pretend life of Riley, in the nightmare of the American Dream?
-
- You see, to have a Number One Nation based on consumerism, your national leaders have to create jobs so those consumers can shop and keep up the pretense that is 'America.' Did you miss that memo? No jobs, no consumers, no consumer-based economy...the math is really quite simple. Did you miss that, too? You cannot be a consumer and prop-up America if you have no job or are treading so much debt water that you can no longer 'shop 'til you drop' to keep this Wall St/DC illusion alive. The business plan has failed, the system is past broken. It is in shambles.
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- America is only number one in three things I can see and identify: 1) lies; and 2) debt; and 3) sheer unmitigated fraud.
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- When did you last hear on the news "failed to meet Wall Street analyst targets or expectations"? Do Wall Street expectations matter to you - or do your expectations for you own life matter to you?
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- That is a pass or fail question, so think the answer through carefully if you can.
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- If asked who 'won' in Afghanistan and Iraq, far too many Americans think we won and all is hunky-dory. We lost folks...and that is why our nation is still stuck in the quicksand because we have gutless leaders who refuse to admit their mistakes, their lies, their crimes against humanity.
-
- They even assassinated a president, John F. Kennedy, because he was going to pull the US out of Vietnam. Immediately after Kennedy was assassinated orders were given by Lyndon Johnson to escalate the Vietnam War.
-
- Who are 'they'?
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- "It's the same old theme since 1916, in your head, in your head, they are fighting with their tanks and their bombs, Zombie, Zombie."
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- What is this "same old theme since 1916?" That theme is Zionism and subjugation of this world under the boot heels of fascist Zionism and globalization.
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- If you research history you will find that the US was drug and duped into World War I and World War II because certain Zionists wanted Israel created and needed the blunt force of the US to accomplish that. For anyone who has paid attention, the world has now witnessed 60 years of Zionist Israel ill-will towards their fellow man, and for the past 20 years ill will towards any Middle East neighbor that Israel does not like. And 'ill will' usually means torture, suffering and death.
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- James A Baker, III actually uttered some truth outside of the US as to why World War II even happened. Read this link recently posted on Rense:
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- http://www.rense.com/general84/baker.htm
-
- Come to grips with that. Somewhere from 49-55 million people died in World War II and that is nothing compared to what will happen if these evil people are allowed to push the world to total war yet again, so they can get their way.
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- There was a draft during the Vietnam War but now we have the 'all volunteer army'. Is it? When people cannot find work because the entire economic engine of their nation is broken, the Army is a job and a paycheck. When an entire nation has been plundered by financial terrorists that is not actually volunteerism to go fight in these made-up wars; it is more accurately described as necessity to eat and many times to support a family.
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- The entire world now knows that George W Bush and Tony Blair willfully lied to invade Iraq again in 2003. What part of 'lied' do you not understand? About 2 million Iraqis are now dead at the hands of the US and UK, so what part of 'LIED' do you not understand? On his recent trip to Baghdad, Bush was put forth as quote: "A great friend of Iraqis, who delivered them from tyranny." Of course, that was while he was dodging two shoes thrown at him because the Iraqi reporter apparently knew what a vile lie looks like and smells like.
-
- Are the deaths of about 2 million human beings in a foreign land OKAY with you? As long as it is not your family, your children, is that OKAY with you? Can you possibly imagine that killing about 2 million people in Afghanistan and 2 million in Iraq has made you less safe in America, not safer? Can you get those numbed brain cells to make that connection at all?
-
- Think, also, about the fact that 1 million US troops have been exposed to depleted uranium, crappy DoD vaccines and will never again have normal lives. Is that OK with you, too?
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- It was not enough to deliver the carnage to other nations; the carnage was also put on our own US soldiers and citizens. Is that OK with you, too? God help you if it is...for much of our military is now so sick it cannot defend America. I am not worried about all of this NorthCom talk and its cracking down on America. Our military is too ill to take on America.
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- Does America stand up for what is right? Hardly. Too many in America still believe every lie DC and Wall Street pump out. The US still does not have that Afghanistan pipeline and Barky is going to 'surge' Afghanistan and prove to the world how much of an pyschopathic killer he is...just like his predecessors.
-
- There is still the lingering reality of 9-11 and using that as the excuse to attack Afghanistan and take over a pipeline deal, rather than joint venture one with the Bridas Corporation. The Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals records are something that Washington DC wishes to avoid having a public discussion on.
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- "It's the same old theme since 1916?" I say that is exactly what we are all witnessing. The good ship America has already hit the iceberg and the ship is going down. Make sure those deck chairs are arranged all neat in a row. Surviving victims may get a slot on the Jerry Springer Show.
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- I hear the rhetoric for 'change' and watch a non-thinking, mesmerized voting populace assume that merely changing party control of the White House, Senate and House are change. Have you not figured it out yet, America? Neither party stands for change. Neither party has that instant, painless solution so Americans can continue to live an irresponsible lifestyle based in self-induced illusions and the intentional delusions and lies fed to the sheep by DC and main stream media.
-
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- If you are relying on these nitwits in DC to deliver solutions and relief to the weary masses, good luck and best wishes.
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- Oh, yes, the US is also going to 'lead' the world in the Global Warming scam. Folks, they are leading you right into the abyss. Wake up before it is too late. It may already be too late but do not go quietly into the night like a nation of cowards quivering every time DC utters the word 'terrorists'. THEY are the terrorists.
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- Look around you, America. The housing bubble was an artificial propping up of the US economy so Americans would think everything was okay with the US economy. It was a massive hoax. Dig deep and learn the truth that our criminal government and the criminal thugs on Wall Street intentionally and willfully plundered other nations, their banks, their pension funds so you folks in America could keep waddling and stumbling through life thinking all was okay. Just go shop, spend 'money' (run up your credit cards), and do not worry about realities.
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- The real cause of the credit crunch is because the US ripped-off other nations to keep your 'American Dream' illusions alive. Look around you, the ship is sinking. You have been had, you have been screwed over by the very government you keep putting back into office.
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- What is in your head? Are you a Zombie or an American?
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- If you are following the Madoff $50 billion scandal story, it should be eminently clear to you, even the Wall St gangsters can't even trust their own. Why would you trust THEM for a second?
-
-
- http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1046
748.html -
- They own the US media, and control the constant drivel you think is the news to base your opinions and your life on. They are embedded in Congress, the Pentagon and the White House, making sure you get the dumb end of the stick right between your eyes. They own the major banks that were just bailed out for about $7 trillion and left you in their wake, many penniless, homeless, destitute and trying to grasp what in the Hell has just happened to America.
-
- It is time for you decide...because the quality of life of your future is on the line, right now, and has been for years. It is time to stop the delusions and face the realities of what is killing our nation and our future.
by Jim Kirwan
12-15-8
If there was a real nation here instead of an occupied country then the events in Iraq yesterday should have been started by US citizens on the day that Bush was inaugurated back in 2001. That simple act of personal defiance spoke volumes and made this secret "victory lap" of arrogance into the criminal-farce that Bush has represented since the day he took office. (1)-
- Now with millions dead and millions more displaced along with the millions of additional people whose lives have been ruined: It is now America's turn to ponder why we failed to act to stop the madness, just as it is Americans, that are now beginning to finally feel the real effects of this political-boomerang that is coming back to kill us, one way or another.
-
- Hundreds of people have asked what they could do about anything, as they feel that they are too small to matter. I would only remind them that a selected-president is only a figurehead, and below him are hundreds of thousands of others, that each for their particular part also serves their owners ends as well. Ordinary citizens do come into contact with those people, and can let them know exactly how they feel, without real violence. By doing this across this occupied territory-real differences could be made: by individual people. So here ironically, is a way for Americans to begin to take back their country given to us by an Iraqi camera-man at a press- conference in his own occupied country....
--MORE--"
A lot gets filed under "conspiracy theory." King's murder. WMDs. Rigged voting machines. Though it has turned out there was good reason for suspecting all three official versions. "Conspiracy theory" is label given to things so people don't investigate, so they are marginalized. It's like calling people "kooks" which, if anyone remembers, included mothers and some doctors saying breast feeding was healthier than bottle feeding, as was having fathers in the delivery room. The slurs against those who resist officialdom's certainty and control continues, with a growing objection to mandated vaccinations at a time when vaccinations are suspected of being linked to autism. And no one needs to strain to think of what anti-war people were called during Vietnam or even with Iraq.
Freedom of thought seems to be okay so long as it is not attached to freedom of speech that asks serious - and extremely important - questions of authority. I have been told by people on Dailykos not to touch 9/11, it could get me thrown off. I have had a close journalist friend say it will marginalize anyone who touches it....
So, now I come to 9/11, a subject I avoid personally. Never liked how it was used to inflame hatred and all that flowed from it. Didn't read about it, didn't want to hear about it. But on election night, I happened to read an Oped News article that included scientific studies and videos. I don't know why I looked but I did. I am a logical person and in very basic ways, a mechanical one, and now I am having trouble with what I saw. I kept looking at the buildings falling and I reading the scientists' comments that it isn't possible for airplanes to have caused them to fall in that way and I read the government explanations and went back again and again to the video and to the scientific data and ....
So, I am in a quandary. The science and what I saw with my own eyes and what makes logical sense don't fit what we were told.
Then, the other day I saw a video by a Catholic priest in the UK. And my journalist friend had warned me after the first article and before the YouTube video, that it's a waste of time to go down that road. But the priest said we are faced with an immense, world-changing lie....So, I am just passing this on, with no position taken. The first video is of a Catholic priest. The second is material from mechanical engineers, including from MIT.
One person responded this way:
"This stuff gets filed under conspiracy theory :-( There is a lot of it going around, as I recall this is the hardest to debunk. I believe the Bush administration has committed many sins of omission on 9/11, but there are no sins of commission. Not even they are that low ..."
And I responded:
"The thing is, if they are that low and we face that, what happens? We subtract "terrorism" from an explanation for things and in doing so, we take the driving force for world destructiveness and for police state control everywhere, away. We would suddenly see that our enemies are not our enemies but those who are running wars and Guantanamo. We would see the world entirely differently.
9/11 is like a giant burr under the world's saddle, making it buck endlessly. What if it were gone? If 9/11 were untrue it would be the biggest lie in human history. What came out of it? An undoing of basic constitutional rights at an astounding speed, then huge systems put in place to spy on and control us. And by whom? Those taking over now at a scale impossible to fathom while letting the rest of us go to hell. What did 9/11 accomplish and for whom? What would happen if it is untrue? And we are not supposed to look? Even when we have major scientists saying it's not possible?
--MORE--"
"Keep your wits about you at all times
Important information here about events in Canada:
Presumably, the Canadian military can also cross into the US if they are all under Bush's control.Harper's "Civil Assistance Plan" documented by the Centre for Research on Globalization, under the SPP-NAU agenda, gives the right of the U.S. military to unilaterally cross into Canada for whatever cover story. This unconstitutionally reached "Executive Agreement" that was made sometime in February 2008, is apparently only the tip of the treasonous iceberg.
Did you also know apparently, that under "NORTHCOM", Canada's military is now under U.S. Presidential Executive Control?
We don't know what our globalists have in mind, but we know they have something in mind. We can expect it to be a very unpleasant surprise meant to beat the American people down, physically but especially psychologically. In order for Americans to accept the globalist agenda, the entire system must be shredded and crushed and destroyed beyond recognition. We must feel utterly hopeless. We must look to the leaders for help. We must be reduced to a shadow of our former selves, and then, as we meekly offer whatever little scraps of dignity and freedom we yet possess, they will deign to grant us so-called security.
Is that how you treat people you love?
--MORE--"
Also watch: VIDEO
After I read the first paragraph, I realized this country is done and done soon.
"Latest cut takes key rate as low as it goes; Fed promises to use other methods to get credit moving again" by Robert Gavin, Globe Staff | December 17, 2008
The Federal Reserve, after slashing its key interest rate almost to zero, said yesterday it will now pursue unconventional actions that one economist called the "moral equivalent of printing money" to try to stop a quickening economic slide.
The Fed yesterday cut its federal funds rate, which banks charge each other for overnight loans, from 1 percent to a range between zero and 0.25 percent, the lowest on record. In an extraordinary statement, Fed policy makers acknowledged that the use of short-term rate cuts, its preferred tool for boosting the economy, is all but spent, and they will turn to other methods to pump cash and credit into the economy....
--more--"
This convinced me:
"US dollar's appeal as safe haven deflates; Currency slides against yen, euro after Fed rate cut" by Bloomberg News | December 18, 2008
LONDON - The world's biggest currency trading firms say the dollar's appeal as a haven amid the financial crisis all but evaporated.
The US currency slid to a 13-year low against the yen yesterday and had its biggest one-day decline versus the euro after the Federal Reserve reduced its target interest rate Tuesday to a range of zero to 0.25 percent, the lowest among the world's biggest economies. CMC Markets said yesterday the currency's prospects appear "ominous." State Street Global Markets said the dollar's outlook has been "undermined."
*******************
State Street Global Markets, a unit of the world's largest money manager for institutions, said the Fed's move is "perilous" for the dollar....
--more--"It won't be long now, America. Enjoy your last "good" Christmas."
Your DOLLAR will soon be worth NOTHING!!!
See: The Ron Paul Platform: Money
Related: Rogers: The Elite Are Turning A Recession Into A Depression
"Why We Need Martial Law; Criminal Government Is Destroying America - Military Must Step In To Restore The Constitution
by John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net
6-16-4
Our government is out of control. The elections are rigged. The Congress is completely bought off. The White House administration is a gang of criminals who are stealing the nation blind. There is no proper accountability from any department of government. And the United States is conducting two major wars, irresponsibly squandering the lives of our young people, for reasons that everyone in the world knows are lies.
Be clear about this: no government official, nor any major media outlet, is objecting to two wars the United States is conducting that everyone knows the reasons for are lies. Tens of thousands of people have been killed for lies, and no one in a position of public responsibility is condemning it.
America has become a nation of monstrously perverted mass murderers. And if you're an American and are not condemning it, then you are complicit in it. You're supporting needless mass murder, you pig!
--MORE--"
I get a lot of comments from people and a lot of emails too. Most people are quite satisfied with what goes on here at Smoking Mirrors. Then there are those who are not. Well… we wouldn’t want to satisfy everyone would we? Some people have told me that I have to love everyone so… maybe I should buy some velvet chaps for the comfort of those who would like to take advantage of that love. Some have told me that my implying people should take their country back ‘by any means necessary’ is too severe and wouldn’t work anyway.
There are people who think I am anti-Christian or anti-Jew. No one seems to think I’m anti-Muslim. My spiritual roots are in Hinduism but… so are the spiritual roots of every other religion… like it or not. What it is is that I don’t care for fundamentalism of ‘any’ stripe and that includes Muslim as well as any who fit that description. I don’t like ‘by the book’, ‘by the numbers’ ‘sex is bad’ bullshit “if you’re not saved you’re going to Hell” garbage and I don’t like Sharia either. I don’t like Zionism which is racism and neo-Nazi tactics. If you happen to be a member of any of these groups and in fundie mode then we don’t have anything to say to each other.
People who tell me I should love everyone certainly do not do so themselves and also don’t know what love is to begin with. The cloying, new age, treacle of kissing everything and making it better are easy words to say and hard words to live by. I do my best to love and care for others but you don’t take an asp to your breast or pet a scorpion. On the day that you are truly one with all, there won’t be any questions to ask or problems to solve anyway but… this is here and now. If everyone who was pointing out what is going on were to stop, then the people who do rely on them would be reduced to getting their information only from the people who are abusing them.
It happens every now and then. A handful of wealthy psychopaths decide that they don’t have enough and have managed to gain control of the press and the police, the governments and the courts and, of course, the means of production. Then they squeeze the world in their hands to drain everything of value from the lives of those they consider to be less than human and by virtue of this, they show that they are the least human of all bi-pedal travelers....
--MORE--"
Joanne Rathe/Globe StaffJennifer Davis, with Charlotte, said her contractions were 3 minutes apart when the state trooper made them wait for a citation. (Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff)
Here at Truth Rocker we CELEBRATE LIFE and ITS MOST PRECIOUS GIFTS given all the LYING WARS and the resulting DESTRUCTION of LIFE and KILLING in this world!!!!!!
You monsters will NEVER QUENCH the DECENCY of HUMANITY!!!!!
What ever happened to PROTECT and SERVE, anyway?
At least everything came out right! :-)
--more--"
Then you are all set!
"National Day of Listening shelves shopping for a gift money can't buy" by Samantha Gross, Associated Press | November 28, 2008
NEW YORK - .... The National Day of Listening.
Launched by oral-history organization StoryCorps and scheduled for a day when families are more often dashing to take advantage of Black Friday sales, the event seeks to give people a reason to sit down with friends and family and have intimate conversations that can be preserved as heirlooms.
"Stopping on Friday the 28th and taking an hour to interview a loved one is the least expensive but most meaningful gift we can give one another," said StoryCorps founder Dave Isay, who said the idea was a response to the financial turmoil faced by so many Americans this year.
"This is the kind of project that can help us through difficult times by remembering what's really important, and that all of our lives matter," he said. The national event is an outgrowth of Isay's StoryCorps program, which since 2003 has helped people record nearly 25,000 interviews at stationary booths in New York and with mobile operations traveling around the country. Participants receive a CD of their 40-minute interview, and all recordings are archived at the Library of Congress....
Ummmm, I'll pass on the talk then. Besides, what is STOPPING YOU from telling people you LOVE THEM? Just YOURSELF and our "culture," Americans. People will think you are "too emotional" and "too serious." Take it from someone who knows!
Such a do-it-yourself approach is more accessible than ever. People who may not even realize it often have digital recording equipment among their gadgets. Many computers can record sound directly, and even iPhones and some iPods can be used to record interviews. Participants can burn their own CDs of their conversations, or they can post them on online audio-sharing sites. The experience creates more than a historical record to be shared with future generations. It can break down barriers and provide an opening for otherwise reserved participants to clearly voice their emotions.... --more--"
Then why do people shut off when I bring up the issues I led this post with?
However, I am willing to accept what the CONSTITUTION SAYS and it says NOTHING about REGULATING MORALITY!! If it is a LEGAL PRODUCT, then it is a LEGAL PRODUCT and government should get out of the way!
Please read The Ron Paul Platform: Personal Freedom for more.
"Rising from ashes, tobacco rebounds; Firms refocus, farms consolidate amid dire forecast" by Bruce Schreiner and Emery P. Dalesio, Associated Press | November 28, 2008
MOUNT STERLING, Ky. - .... Big Tobacco and individual growers have proven as resilient as their leaf, aided by a boost in exports primarily to Germany and Switzerland and by new marketing tactics emphasizing smokeless options.... The uptick has coincided with the increasing consolidation of farms.
I love how we export stuff we call poison to other countries!
The top two US cigarette makers -
Yeah, just don't smoke a joint -- it might actually help you!
Have a drink instead!
"Down under, campaign over drinking sparks spirited debate" by Kristen Gelineau, Associated Press | November 28, 2008
Sarah Watson (left) and Erin Marsh enjoyed cocktails at Melt bar last month. In the past six months, a multimillion-dollar national campaign against binge drinking has been rolled out. (Rick Rycroft/associated press)
See where the gut comes from, ladies?
SYDNEY - .... Australia has long been known as a nation of beer-loving boozers. But now the government, fed up with what it sees as a growing crisis of out-of-control drinking and subsequent violence, has decided it's time for a change. In the past six months, a barrage of measures have been rolled out: a multimillion-dollar campaign against binge drinking, and a heavy tax on premixed drinks popular with young people....
*******************
Throughout its history, Australia's leaders have taken on drinking with limited success. Rising concern led to a temperance movement in 1832 and, in 1916, a new law ordered bars in the state of New South Wales to close at 6 p.m. So drinkers leaving work at 5:30 rushed the pubs and chugged, getting as tanked as possible before spilling onto the street, a practice called the "six o'clock swill." Crime rates soared.
In March, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a $34.7 million campaign against bingeing, complete with an advertising blitz and grants to community groups. Reaction was mixed. "It's a bit rich for a man who got famously stonkered at a lap-dancing club in New York five years ago to be lecturing the rest of us on binge drinking," said a Sydney Morning Herald columnist, Miranda Devine.
Rudd apologized for his visit to the strip club and admitted he had had too much to drink. In April his government went ahead with an increase in the tax on premixed alcoholic drinks, which are sweet, bottled drinks popular among young people.
You gotta LOVE the HYPOCRISY, no?
A slew of protest groups popped up on Facebook, including "Aussies Against the Alcohol Tax Increase," which has attracted more than 68,000 members. "Binge drinking is a big problem and young people shouldn't be smashing themselves," said the group's founder, Justin McCoy. "But people wanting to have a drink after work shouldn't be punished just for the actions of a few."
--more--"
Amazing how people PROTEST when you get near their BOOZE, 'eh? Now if only they would get so fired up about the economic rape or the mass-murdering wars!
As for my stance on sex: The Protests the Paper Cares About
Nevertheless, I am FOR this "industry." Government has NO PLACE when it comes to VICE (another word for FREEDOM)!
"Even sex can't sell in this economy; Brothels feel the pinch in Nevada" by Ashley Powers, Los Angeles Times | November 28, 2008
Then we are really in trouble, America!
Amy, 58, in her room at Donna's Ranch in Wells, Nev., once bought a $32,000 car in cash; now her mortgage saps her pay. (Photo for the Los Angeles Times by George Frey)
WELLS, Nev. - The women at Donna's Ranch are crowded around the kitchen table griping about depleted bank accounts. At this northeastern Nevada bordello, they woo grizzled truckers and weary travelers for a single reason: money.
Lately, the women don't go home with much.
Amy, 58, once bought a $32,000
Marisol's daughters think she works at a resort. She struggles to keep up the ruse. It now takes months, not weeks, to bring $5,000 back to California....
Signs of the economic free fall have cropped up in many of Nevada's 25 or so legal brothels....
**********************
About a dozen years ago, Donna's Ranch owner Geoff Arnold plunked down more than $1 million for Donna's Ranch. He's a certified public accountant in Boise, Idaho, and had combed the books of several brothels; buying one seemed business-savvy. He owns another in Battle Mountain, Nev. "They're easy to run," said Arnold, president of the state brothel association. "If you keep the girls happy, you're done. If the girls are happy, then the guys are happy. I can't think of any other business as good as a brothel, except for a doctor's office - they're equally profitable."
Well, sex is a form of medicine, isn't it? :-)
--more--"
Of course, all standards should be as LOCALIZED as possible, and if a community does not want brothels (or porn shops, or drug stores, etc) then they should be allowed to ban them! It is called governing by the CONSTITUTION of the United States!! You know, that piece of parchment that outlines our government and its powers.
"For jobless, long waits to file claims; State's walk-in centers, phone lines overwhelmed" by Robert Gavin, Globe Staff | November 28, 2008
A surge in layoffs at Massachusetts companies is straining the state's ability to process unemployment claims, leading to lengthy lines at local walk-in centers and long waits for those filing by phone - if they can get through at all.... After following a long list of automated instructions, and expecting to at last talk to a person, she heard this message: "Due to high call volume, we can't take your call right now. Try back another time."
Is the INSULT enough, or do you need me to let loose with some profanity-laced tireades?
***************
First-time claims for unemployment in Massachusetts have jumped more than 30 percent from a year ago, and they are likely to rise even higher. A recent forecast projects the state jobless rate, which was 5.5 percent in October, could rise nearly 3 more points over the next year or so, to 8.3 percent, as the national economic downturn deepens....
"People are waiting, and I apologize for the waits they have been experiencing," said Ed Malmborg, director of the Division of Unemployment Assistance. "There has been a dramatic upswing in claims, and it takes time to bring people on board." --more--"
Yeah, YOU have to WAIT, suffering citizen!!!
Oh, and did I not mention the $1 BILLION dollar giveaway to the pharmaceutical corporations, even though "it's never been easy to turn a profit in biotech?" Flush that money away, too, taxpayer. Of course, the war looters were next in line for a handout. And should the state be appropriating money for a "multimillion-dollar reconstruction" of golf courses?
Nor is it RECKLESS to BORROW the STATE INTO OBLIVION so they can PAY INTEREST to BANKS while SITTING ON $2 BILLION DOLLARS!
Need one final insult, Mass. taxpayers?
"Town officials... are trying to decide how much of a property tax break to offer and how they can secure state funding for infrastructure improvements.... although it could take several years for the studio to realize its potential"
Also see: Hollywood, Massachusetts
Hollywood (East) Disses Veterans
More Mass. $$$ to Movie Makers
Sorry, that wasn't it:
"$5m in tax breaks going to IBM for Littleton project
The Massachusetts Economic Assistance Coordinating Council approved $5 million in state and local tax breaks for IBM Corp., which recently began a $63 million expansion in Littleton. IBM vice president Bob McDonald said the company plans to create 42 jobs at the site over the next decade. McDonald said the computer giant, based in Armonk, N.Y., has already begun renovating a building and hopes to move into it next month. McDonald said the tax incentives were important, but the company would have gone forward with the expansion without them. IBM has 4,000 employees in Massachusetts, including about 2,000 in Littleton (Boston Globe October 30 2008)."
Yup, but you UNEMPLOYED person can either WAIT or CALL BACK!! After all, the government is working for YOU!!!!
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Torturing Democracy, an expose of how and why America came to be involved in open large-scale torture of prisoners (many of whom were simply shepherds captured by mountain tribesmen and sold into captivity), is now available for viewing online.
As Scott Horton reported last month, PBS can't find a time slot for this Frontline documentary until January 21, 2009 -- the day after Bush and Cheney are scheduled to leave office.
Horton has reported more recently that this documentary could help to provide "A Ticket to The Hague for Dick Cheney". Why? Because it has the power to change the minds of influential people in denial.
Horton explains:
Gene Burns is one of the nation’s most popular talk radio hosts. For years he has dismissed accounts of torture; America, he has said, does not torture. But last night, after watching Torturing Democracy and realizing that he had not understood how important and serious an issue torture had become, Burns abruptly changed his tune. Here’s a transcript of his remarks.George Bush is not the only one who has good reason to be afraid of too many Americans watching these documentaries. And that, in my opinion, is good incentive to watch them -- and to spread the word about them!I now believe that some international human rights organization ought to open an investigation of the Bush Administration, I think focused on Vice President Dick Cheney, and attempt to bring charges against Cheney in the international court of justice at The Hague, for war crimes. Based on the manner in which we have treated prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, and the manner in which we have engaged in illegal rendition–that is, surreptitiously kidnapping prisoners and flying them to foreign countries where they could be tortured by foreign agents who do not follow the same civilized standards to which we subscribe.A large part of the population still credits the Bush Administration’s absurd claim that it never embraced or applied torture to detainees as a matter of policy. Two recent documentaries, Alex Gibney’s Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side (for which I was both a consultant and interviewee) and Sherry Jones’s PBS feature Torturing Democracy investigate the administration’s policies and conduct. Both draw from decision-makers inside the administration and soldiers on the frontline.
I’ve always said that I’ve thought that even at Guantánamo Bay the United States was careful to stay on this side of torture. In fact, you may recall that on a couple of occasions we got into a spirited debate on this program about waterboarding, and whether waterboarding was torture. And I took the position that it was not torture, that it was simulated drowning, and that if that produced information which preserved our national security, I thought it was permissible.
And then I saw Torturing Democracy.
And I’m afraid, now that I have seen what I have seen, that I was wrong about that. It looks to me, based on this documentary, as if in fact we have engaged in behavior and practices at Guantánamo Bay, and in these illegal renditions, that are violations of the international human rights code.
And I believe that Dick Cheney is responsible. I believe that he was the agent of the United States government charged with developing the methodology used at Guantánamo Bay, supervising it for the administration, and indulging in practices which are in fact violations of human rights.
The administration did its best to spike both films. Taxi was to be aired on the Discovery Channel, but with Discovery Communications then in the process of going public and facing sensitive SEC clearances, executives apparently decided not to risk provoking the anger of the White House. As I reported elsewhere, PBS also found that it had no network space for Torturing Democracy until January 20, 2009 — the day the Bush Administration decamps from Washington.
Why was the administration so concerned about these two films? The conversion of Gene Burns supplies the answer. No one who sits through these films, I believe, will be able afterwards to accept the official version of events. George Bush has good reason to be afraid of too many Americans watching these documentaries.
So here are those links again:
Torturing Democracy
Taxi to the Dark Side
--MORE--"
(Blog author's note: I have seen Taxi to the Dark Side and believe it is EVERY AMERICANS DUTY to see it. I also look forward(?) with disgust at seeing this latest report. Then I will ask -- along with others -- when do the WAR CRIMES TRIBUNALS START?)
For more on the abominable atrocity of U.S. torture, go HERE and scroll down.
"Outreach renews a call to stem violence" by John R. Ellement, Globe Staff | November 25, 2008
Boston ministers and law enforcement officials announced yesterday the second straight "Season of Peace," a public education campaign aimed at reducing, if not eliminating, violence in the city between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day....
Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said while crime is down slightly, he hopes the program cuts it even further:
"We as adults have an obligation, a duty to our kids, to preach this message of peace. If we can reduce it by one violent event, I'm happy."
This as we SEND THEM OFF to WARS based on DAMNABLE LIES -- and POUR TRILLIONS into them while NEGLECTING OUR CHILDREN!
--more--"HOW MANY campaign promises does this guy have to go back on for the American people to see that he is simply ONE MORE GLOBALIST FRONT MAN -- with a different color skin (that is how the MSM and globalist rulers intend to claim his popular appeal at the same time they stifle any dissent against their plans).
"Guantanamo's closure would not settle fate of detainees" by Julian E. Barnes and David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times | November 25, 2008
WASHINGTON - ....
Obama advisers predict that his administration might have to decide whether to ask Congress to pass legislation allowing a number of detainees to be held indefinitely, without trial....
The debate suggests that the decision to close Guantanamo might be the easy part for Obama. Much harder will be sorting out the legal complexities of holding, prosecuting, transferring, or releasing the roughly 250 prisoners at the prison....
Why should they be held AT ALL? 9/11 was an INSIDE JOB by the CIA and MOSSAD, and the WHOLE WORLD KNOWS IT!!!!
So ALL THESE GUYS are either INNOCENT or OUR "Al-CIA-Duh" agents!!!! STOP IT with the SHIT FOOLEYS, 'bamer!!!!!
Not all can be returned to home countries, even if they are no longer considered a possible danger. The process of sending them home is slow, and some fear they would be tortured or killed upon their return....
Like they WEREN'T BEING TORTURED at GITMO??
WE have to IMPRISON THEM INDEFINITELY so they WONT BE TORTURED after we have ALREADY TORTURED THEM?
Good God, what the hell kind of logic is that?!!!!
The pressure for new legislation could be increased if officials find a larger number of prisoners who can neither stand trial nor go home. Possible legislation ranges from indefinite detention or a new national security court to a simpler law blocking detainees from seeking asylum. --more--"
The GREAT, DEAR LEADERS ain't closing nuthin', AmeriKa!!!!!!
Related: Torturing Democracy: A Documentary That Could Put Dick Cheney Out Of Our Misery
"N.Y. Fed chief an unconventional, but compatible, choice" by Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff | November 25, 2008
.... Like President-elect Barack Obama, who nominated him, Timothy F. Geithner is global in both outlook and upbringing, having spent much of his boyhood in Africa and Asia, where his father, Peter Geithner, worked for a US development agency and later the Ford Foundation....
**************
The New York native has been deeply involved with Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and current Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in the various responses and bailouts in the financial crisis that has spread from Wall Street to the broader economy. In March, Geithner engineered the Fed's $29 billion emergency financing that delivered Bear Stearns from imminent bankruptcy and into a bargain buyout by a competitor, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Testifying the following month before the Senate Banking Committee, some of whose members were critical, Geithner defended the extraordinary intervention as:
"[A way to] avert substantial damage to the economy. The market sorts out which companies survive and which fail; however, under the circumstances prevailing in the markets, the issues raised . . . extended well beyond the fate of one company."
....
Geithner took the helm of the New York Fed, the flagship of 12 regional branches of the US central bank, in 2003 after spending about two years as director of policy development and review at the International Monetary Fund. Prior to that, he spent 13 years in the Treasury Department under Republican and Democratic administrations, rising through the bureaucracy to key posts that culminated with his appointment as undersecretary for international affairs. In various roles at the Treasury, he was a globe-trotting trouble-shooter, negotiating aid packages and reforms in Thailand, South Korea, Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico....
After completing his education, he worked for Henry Kissinger's firm, where he helped research a book for the former secretary of state before entering the Treasury Department.
--more--"
What more do you need to know? I look at the names and connections, and realize there will be NO CHANGE -- save those that the GLOBALIST WANT!
"China maintains hold on Tibet; Show of force aims to deter unrest" by Charles Hutzler, Associated Press | November 25, 2008
XIAHE, China - .... In a separate development, China rejected the findings of a United Nations committee that torture is "routine and widespread" in the Asian nation, calling the report biased. A report issued last week by the UN Committee Against Torture concluded that Chinese police frequently use torture to extract confessions.... --more--"
And as that august body of globalist mass-murderers (rightly) criticizes the Chinese government: US fights release of Chinese Muslims
Of course, the U.S. TORTURES THEM for the Chines so we are looking at MSM s*** fooleys, folks! All part of the BIG GAME of OBFUSCATION and LIES!!!!
"Yeah, right. Tibet. Human rights. Sure. Whatever." -- Mike Rivero of What Really HappenedHow come this accounting isn't in my MSM article pick-up in the post below, readers?
At this point, do you need any more evidence that my comments on AmeriKa's MSM are true, readers?!
This is what I do EVERY DAY so I KNOW they are LYING or HIDING things!!!!
Which is why YOU and I are HERE, isn't it?
"Report: U.S. Soldiers Did 'Dirty Work' for Chinese Interrogators"
"by JUSTIN ROOD
May 20, 2008—
"U.S. military personnel at Guantanamo Bay allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report.
Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there.
According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators.
Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar.
U.S. personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese," she said Tuesday. When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment, she said.
"Why are we doing China's dirty work?" Manning said. "Surely we're better than that."
Ummm, actually no. Not on torture, and not on natural disasters, either!
You PROUD NOW, shit-eating 'murkns?
An official authorized to speak on behalf of the Defense Department but who declined to be named confirmed it was Pentagon policy to allow officials from other countries to have access to interview their nationals at Guantanamo but declined to discuss the specifics alleged in the report.
According to Fine's report, the FBI agent said the Uighur detainee told him that the night before his interrogation by Chinese officials, "he was awakened at 15-minute intervals the entire night and into the next day." The detainee also allegedly said he was "exposed to low room temperatures for long periods of time and was deprived of at least one meal."
"The agent stated that he understood that the treatment of the Uighur detainees was either carried out by the Chinese interrogators or was carried out by U.S. personnel at the behest of Chinese interrogators," the report by the Department of Justice inspector general stated.
We render prisoners to Syria and Egypt to be tortured -- and China renders theirs to us, huh?
U.S. forces captured roughly three dozen Uighurs in eastern Afghanistan shortly after invading the country in October 2001. The men said they were working there to earn money for families back home and to evade the Chinese government, which is known for taking a harsh and uncompromising line with separatist Uighurs.
So AmeriKa is WORSE than China, aren't we?
The U.S. State Department has found China to have suppressed the religious freedom of Uighurs, who are Muslim, and has accused the Chinese government of persecuting, even executing, those who advocate Uighur independence.
Oooooh, they are MUSLIM!! That EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!!!
You know, I never want to hear the "china is an enemy" crap then, huh?
In 2006, after the United States released five Uighurs from Guantanamo, China asked for them to be repatriated so they could be prosecuted as terrorists. The United States declined to do so, out of concern they would not be treated humanely.
Yeah, we give out fun rides like waterboarding and stuff like that!!!
Instead they transferred the men to Albania, which was the only country out of 90 approached by the U.S. government who would take them.
The Pentagon says it is trying to release and resettle the majority of the 17 Uighurs who remain in Guantanamo, although it says it still considers them enemy combatants and a threat."
Pffffft!!
Related: American Taxpayers on Hook For $8 TRILLION Dollars
Treasury extends backing for market mutual funds
The government is extending a program to bolster the money market mutual fund industry. The Treasury Department said the program, which provides guarantees for the investment products, will now run until April 30. The temporary program had been slated to expire Dec. 18. The department said it is taking the action "to support ongoing stability in this market." Treasury said last week it did not anticipate taking similar action for any other mutual funds (AP)."
Turnpike Toll Hikes Going for Manager Bonuses
Massachusetts taxpayers must like getting poked in the pooper.
"Huge bill could soon come due for Turnpike; Liability at nearly half-billion dollars" by Noah Bierman, Globe Staff | November 25, 2008
Ten days after the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board recommended sweeping toll increases, officials said yesterday that the authority's finances have grown even worse, with the agency's liability for a set of risky investments rising to nearly a half-billion dollars.... the authority could soon be sent a bill for $353 million if the financial markets continue to deteriorate.
Several legislators have argued that the toll increases should be set aside while the Legislature debates alternatives, including a House proposal to raise the gas tax and a Senate proposal to raise cash through long-term leases on the roads with private businesses.
Senator Mark Montigny, a New Bedford Democrat who leads the Senate bonding committee and was briefed on the problems yesterday:
"We're looking at a sinking ship and the hole is getting bigger every day. And it's not just the ship at the Pike. It's the credit markets and the economy . . . This credit crisis is not over."
Where did all that bailout money go?
Beginning in 1999, the Turnpike Authority entered into complex arrangements - known as credit swaps - with three investment banks as a means of raising cash to pay off rising Big Dig debt.
Oh, we should be HANGING THESE FUCKING PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Essentially, the banks paid the Turnpike Authority cash for the right to swap interest rates with the agency on future debt payments. The deals, while immediately raising $71.5 million in cash for the agency, left it vulnerable to fluctuations in interest rates. The deals also established termination fees that rise and fall based on market conditions.
Earlier this year, a declining market had raised the termination fees on the deals to about $200 million, which the Turnpike could be forced to pay immediately if certain triggers were tripped. By Friday, that liability had risen to about $447.7 million. Making things worse was a decline in the credit rating for the turnpike's insurer last week; another step down could trigger an immediate request for payment from one of the banks of about $353 million.
All of the possible implications are subject to market changes and the decisions of bankers and credit agencies, which have not made their intentions known....
The translation of all this? While SERVICES are CUT and TAXES RAISED, the state will be PAYING OFF BANKS for A RIP-OFF!!!!
Montigny faulted the Patrick administration for failing to investigate fully the complicated investments that led to problems. He said other government agencies that have seen complex investments turn sour during the credit crisis have been able to renegotiate or terminate their agreements after proving they were entered into nefariously....
BLOOD-SUCKING FUCKING BANKS!! BURN 'EM ALL DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!
The smallest deal, from 1999, is with JP Morgan. The termination fee for the deal has grown from a few million to about $19 million in just a few months. As a result, the authority has been forced in the last few days to put about $7 million into an escrow account, leaving the agency with less cash.
The second deal, a 2001 agreement with UBS, will cost the authority about $2.2 million per month beginning in January because of the increased interest it will now have to pay on a certain amount of debt.
I thought the banks were supposed to HELPING US OUT, not BENDING US OVER A BARREL!!!!!! WHERE ARE YOU, American people!!!!!?
And that's not even the worst-case scenario.... The termination payment could also rise, depending on the unpredictable financial markets.
"Every day it's a different number," an official said. "We have no control."
A legislative freeze of the toll hikes could hasten UBS's ability to demand an immediate payment, according to Patrick officials.
Translation: If you DON'T ACCEPT a dick in your mouth (toll/tax increases), then the banks will ram one up your ass!!!!!!!
Under some interpretations of the agency's deal with the bank, it could be viewed as infringement on the authority's independence and set off the trigger. But even if the authority raises tolls, it has no control over the falling fortunes of its insurer and may still pay the price.
How does that PERPETUAL ANAL RAPE feel, Massachusetts liberals and democrats!!
Oh, no, no, WE NEED the INCOME TAX because we have to pay for services!!! This is why I have NO RESPECT for the SHIT-HEADED LIBERALS of this state!!!!
The final deal, with Lehman Brothers in 2002, is the most directly tied to the toll increase. Lehman Brothers has gone bankrupt, but the owner of its assets has the right to terminate the full value of the agreement for about $75.7 million if the Turnpike Authority's credit rating drops. The authority's rating is at the cusp of junk bond status, and credit rating agencies have warned that without a toll increase, it will be lowered soon.... --more--"
Are you as ANGRY as I AM, Mass. residents?
Then HOLD ON to your SOCKS and HOSE and PULL!!!!!
Of course, "flushing . . . millions of dollars away supporting a highly profitable industry" when it comes to $300 million in taxpayer dollars for Hollywood is o.k., even as the price of a school lunch rises; paying $13 million for a computer software system that could have cost less than $3 million is all right because the winner was a close friend of the House speaker, even as my poorer-than-dirt district "has been struggling to close a $2 million budget gap."; the lottery shelling out "millions of dollars" for sports tickets for "lottery officials, their family members, and friends" is fine, even as schools are closing; making interest payments to banks to the tune of "a staggering $22 billion" for the Big Pit, as we call it around here, is required, even as bridges are neglected across the state; and again, paying off banks like UBS, who can "demand repayment of an additional $2 million a month beginning in January" while also receiving a "$179 million payment," while the state pension fund loses $1 billion dollars -- which still didn't stop the executive director from carving himself a nice "$64,000 bonus on top of his $322,000 annual salary."
Oh, and did I not mention the $1 BILLION dollar giveaway to the pharmaceutical corporations, even though "it's never been easy to turn a profit in biotech?" Flush that money away, too, taxpayer. Of course, the war looters were next in line for a handout. And should the state be appropriating money for a "multimillion-dollar reconstruction" of golf courses?
Nor is it RECKLESS to BORROW the STATE INTO OBLIVION so they can PAY INTEREST to BANKS while SITTING ON $2 BILLION DOLLARS!
Need one final insult, Mass. taxpayers?
"Town officials... are trying to decide how much of a property tax break to offer and how they can secure state funding for infrastructure improvements.... although it could take several years for the studio to realize its potential"
Also see: Hollywood, Massachusetts
Hollywood (East) Disses Veterans
More Mass. $$$ to Movie Makers
Sorry, that wasn't it:
"$5m in tax breaks going to IBM for Littleton project
The Massachusetts Economic Assistance Coordinating Council approved $5 million in state and local tax breaks for IBM Corp., which recently began a $63 million expansion in Littleton. IBM vice president Bob McDonald said the company plans to create 42 jobs at the site over the next decade. McDonald said the computer giant, based in Armonk, N.Y., has already begun renovating a building and hopes to move into it next month. McDonald said the tax incentives were important, but the company would have gone forward with the expansion without them. IBM has 4,000 employees in Massachusetts, including about 2,000 in Littleton (Boston Globe October 30 2008)."
Yup, but TOLLS and TAXES need to go up!!!!!!!!!
How's that BOWL of SHIT going down, Mass. residents?
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truthrocker- Truth Rocker
Syndicate
"An expert traces the IP path and finds the source of this virus attack is Israel" -- Wake the Flock Up
No wonder hackers and porn sites are never busted!!!!
Also makes you wonder about Heartland, doesn't it?
Related: Another Israeli ID Theft Ring Busted
Israeli spy ring
Update:
Mystery virus hits 15 million PCs around the world
More than 3,000 British organisations – including hospitals, the Ministry of Defence, councils, and what are described as "well-known firms" – have been hit. They and the hundreds of thousands of other victim organisations in countries such as the US, Russia, China and India are now bracing themselves for the virus to be triggered and do whatever malicious work it has been designed to do.
Who wants the blog-o-sphere silenced right now?
Had it not been for the internet and the blogs, Israel would have succeeded in selling the idea that the attack on Gaza was all HAMAS' fault.
When Tzipi Livni got up and stated flat out that there were no civilian casualties in Gaza. she did so because she honestly believed that all contradictory information would be blocked from reaching the world.
She was wrong. Photos of dead children were already in wide circulation even as she stood at the podium.
Israel has invested much of the money they get from the taxpayers to buy up and control the media (see BBC). This PR disaster over the last month has finally made them realize that the precious control over the information of the world has been lost; the high ground in the war for the minds of the people is here on the net. If Israel cannot control that (and they are trying) then they will lose the war of public opinion.
So, to repeat; who wants the blog-o-sphere silenced right now?